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Mr. Marsha Singh (Bradford, West) (Lab): I am grateful to have the opportunity to speak in this most important and serious debate.
Those of us who opposed the war from the very beginning did not need a Hutton or a Butler report. We knew that this country was not under attack or in any imminent danger of attack, and that no ally of ours was either. Therefore, war was wrong.
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I shall quote what appeared on the front page of The Independent on Thursday 15 July. It summed up the headlines of the Butler report in a most apt and appropriate way. The newspaper stated that the intelligence was flawed, that the dossier was dodgy, that Dr. Brian Jones was vindicated, that Iraqi links to al-Qaeda were unproven, that the public were misled, and that the case for war was exaggerated. The newspaper asked who was to blame: its answer was no one. I shall return to that point later.
However, is it a coincidence that the US Senate Intelligence Committee produced exactly the same findings about the quality of US intelligence as did Butler about UK intelligence? What is going on? Was it agreed on both sides of the Atlantic that the intelligence reports should be spun and beefed up?
If we went to war in good faith, we must accept that that good faith was based on a complete misjudgment about weapons of mass destruction. That much is clear now, but there is a price to pay when a misjudgment is made, and the price for this war has been heavy. House of Commons Library estimates of 16 July show that 885 US and 60 British military personnel have died. There have also been 60 deaths among the other coalition partners.
Estimates of Iraqi casualties are difficult to obtain, because the Americans do not want to know. As a result, they do not know the figures, and the same is true for Britain. However, the website iraqbodycount.net estimated that between 11,164 and 13,118 Iraqi civilians had died up to 16 July. It puts civilian post-war casualties at between 9,015 and 10,503. In addition, there have been 111 deaths among foreign contractors, and nine such people are known to be missing. That is an appalling loss of human life, based on good faith—and on misjudgment.
Mr. Leigh: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that another price has been paid, and it is the devastating loss of confidence in the western world on the part of the Arab and Muslim world? Our Prime Minister was let down by the US Administration: he was promised progress on the road map, but it has not materialised.
Mr. Singh: I shall come to that point shortly. There is another price—the financial cost—although it is obviously much less than the human price. According to the Library, up to the end of March we had spent £2.5 billion, and another £1.3 billion was available from April. The US Congress has appropriated £100 billion to cover the US military operations in Iraq. The cost of operations to this country is £125 million a month. I cannot speak for the Americans, but I can speak for my constituents, who would rather have seen our billions of pounds spent on schools, hospitals or pensioners, not on bombs, bullets and bloodshed.
What about the war on terror? Every morning and every night we see on our screens the complete lack of success that the war had in the war on terror. A recent book by a CIA agent, entitled "Imperial Hubris", says:
"Bin Laden saw the invasion of Iraq as a Christmas gift he never thought he'd get."
It also says that the invasion of Iraq was an
"avaricious, premeditated, unprovoked war against a foe who posed no immediate threat."
We will never win the war on terror by waging war against Muslim countries. The Muslim world is rightly bemused, both in this country and across the world. We have attacked Saddam Hussein for not following UN resolutions—
David Winnick (Walsall, North) (Lab): If the accusation is that we are anti-Muslim, can my hon. Friend explain why we decided, outside of the United Nations, to liberate Kosovo to stop the killing of Muslims? We did not go in for Christians, Jews, Sikhs or Hindus. My hon. Friends the Members for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) and for Halifax (Mrs. Mahon) and my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Medway (Mr. Marshall-Andrews) were so opposed to our action, but it was taken to stop the constant killing of Muslims. If we are anti-Muslim, how does my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, West (Mr. Singh) explain that?
Mr. Singh: I never said that we were anti-Muslim. I am trying to explain how the Muslim world sees our actions and the American actions. The Muslim world sees the west standing on the sidelines for five and more decades while the Palestinians have been persecuted by the Israeli state. Palestinian land has been under occupation for decades by the Israeli state, and we have turned a blind eye or mouthed platitudes as succour for the Palestinians. That is no succour for the Palestinians or the Muslim community.
Mrs. Lorna Fitzsimons (Rochdale) (Lab): Will my hon. Friend give way?
For five and a bit decades, we have seen the Kashmiri people denied the right to self-determination, irrespective of UN resolutions. We have seen human rights abuses, murders and rapes in Kashmir, but the Muslim world sees the west standing idly by and turning a blind eye. We have said that we will do our best to promote our dialogue, but we have done nothing for the Kashmiri people.
While the Russians wage savage war against Muslim Chechens, the west and the international community stand idly by and turn a blind eye.
Mr. Straw: It is incorrect for my hon. Friend to say that we have stood idly by in respect of Kashmir. I hope that he welcomes the rapprochement that has now taken place between India and Pakistan over Kashmir, in which we have been actively engaged.
Mr. Singh: I do welcome that rapprochement, but as the Muslim community sees it—and as I see it—there has been talk but no action in all the areas I have mentioned. The way to win the war on terror is to let the Palestinians have their homeland, let the Kashmiri people have the right to self-determination and stop the savagery of the Russians in Chechnya. We have lost the trust of Muslims across the world. That is a heavy price for this country to pay. Indeed, we might have all our contractors in Saudi Arabia chased out by terrorists in months to come.
The war has not made the world a safer place: it has made it immeasurably more dangerous. What has been the cost to my party? Members have left in droves and
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voters have deserted in their thousands. The evidence of that was here today in the person of the new hon. Member for Leicester, South (Mr. Gill). Only the Prime Minister can draw a line under this affair for our party. Many of us who opposed the war believe that it has besmirched our beliefs, compromised our principles and disfigured our souls. The desert sands are stained in crimson, a crimson that will never be washed away. The souls of the dead and the consciences of the living cry out in anguish because of that premeditated, pre-emptive war, based on a lust for revenge by one leader and political vanity in another. Somebody is responsible for the carnage and waste of life. The buck, as we all know, stops at the top. It is time for the buck to stop and it is time for our troops to come home.
5.56 pm
Mr. John Gummer (Suffolk, Coastal) (Con): There is no doubt that Iraq is better off without Saddam Hussein. There is no doubt either that Zimbabwe would be better off without Mugabe and Burma would be better off without its murderous regime. We could change the lives of people in North Korea and the Sudan by regime change. But we have not chosen to do so, because the fundamental issue is that of the just war. Once one takes into one's hands the ability to wage war when it is not the last and only answer when one faces an imminent threat, one offers the opportunity to everyone else to do the same thing. We say we can do it because we are the sort of people who would not do it unless we had a very good reason. That is our argument, but it is not a true argument.
I am ashamed when people say that we could not continue with containment because it takes so long. Actually, that is the message. If we want a peaceful world, we have to go the extra mile. We have to go on and on until there is no alternative to force. Otherwise, we have no moral position to take. The Prime Minister let this nation down when he tried to pretend that his was a moral position. He was opposed by those who know a bit about morality—the Pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Dalai Lama and even the president of the Free Church Federal Council all said that he was wrong—but he had to say that, because otherwise he would not have received the vote of this House.
I voted against the war because I had heard the Prime Minister on such matters before. I pressed him again and again to give me a straight answer on the bombing of the aspirin factory in the Sudan. He never gave me that answer. He constantly refused to answer the direct question and finally told me that there were to be no more questions because it was a matter of national security. He was not willing to be straight, and the people of Britain know that.
We have to remember that the Prime Minister told us that we should judge his integrity not simply on the facts but on whether they were properly relayed. It cannot be said that the facts were properly relayed, nor can it be said that the Government, who took, and take, every opportunity to batter the BBC and the media, took any action whatever to counter the generally understood view that we were 45 minutes from disaster. In other words, there was an immediacy at the heart of their argument that did not exist.
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The problem is that once one accepts the theory of the preventive war, one opens the gates for everyone to claim it in every case—India, Pakistan or any country with a long-standing grudge or a serious problem. All can claim that in their own case, although not in that of others, they are acting to prevent war. That is why the problem is fundamental. One of the most dispiriting and miserable moments I can recall was during Prime Minister's questions last week, when the Prime Minister, in a carefully prepared piece of theatricism, refused to answer the comments of my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the Opposition and engaged in what can only be described as a knockabout affair. A knockabout affair—when we were talking about something that could lead to more and more cases of people taking into their own hands the decision to wage war on their neighbours.
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