Daily Mail, January 27 2003

This is a critical week for the future of Iraq and the alliance between Britain and America. Today, the UN’s chief weapons inspector Hans Blix reports to the Security Council on his progress. Tomorrow, President George W Bush makes his seminal State of the Union address, and on Friday Tony Blair is to meet him at Camp David for a council of war.

It is also a fateful week for the Prime Minister. For he now realises that he has still failed to persuade the British public of the case for war. According to a YouGov poll at the weekend, just over a quarter of respondents said they were convinced that Saddam Hussein was sufficiently dangerous to justify military action. And only one in five would support war without UN backing.

Meanwhile, Mr Blair’s self-appointed role as the bridge between the US and Europe has been holed below the waterline by the declared hostility to war of France and Germany.

President Bush, aware that opposition is also growing amongst the American public, is saying the inspectors should be given more time. But the world has already waited 11 years for proof that Saddam has destroyed his capacity to build weapons of mass destruction.

Mr Blair says that in the absence of a second UN resolution, war would be justified if the inspectors said Iraq had obstructed them. But Mr Blix says his report will be ‘a mixed bag’ – in other words, it will provide ammunition for both liberators and appeasers.

In this tumult, the Prime Minister has been criticised for not making the case for war effectively enough. In fact, the case has been made, but the public will not accept it. Instead, myths have achieved the status of killer arguments.

Myth number one is that no ‘smoking gun’ has been found. But the west doesn’t have to produce a smoking gun. It is Saddam who is required to produce the evidence that he has complied with the terms of the 1991 Gulf War cease-fire.

This made it a condition that Saddam destroy his weapons of mass destruction and prove that he had done so, because he was rightly considered a huge menace to the world.

Repeatedly declaring his intention to become the leader of the Arabs, he had already invaded and attacked a number of countries, posing a direct threat to western interests. If he became armed with weapons of mass destruction, this threat would then paralyse the west.

That danger has never gone away. Much US and British intelligence obviously cannot be revealed, as it would compromise vital sources. But the burden of proof lies not with the west but with Saddam to prove he has got rid of the weapons we know he had.

Yet he has failed to produce a single document on the fate of his known stockpile of deadly VX nerve gas, or the anthrax or botulinum he had amassed. He has failed to explain his known attempt to procure enriched uranium from abroad, or his manufacture of specific fuel for ballistic missiles that he claims not to possess.

In recent weeks, the inspectors have discovered chemical warheads – showing Saddam lied when he said he had no weapons of mass destruction – along with 3,000 documents revealing his continuing efforts to build nuclear weapons.

We know he has issued his troops with chemical protection suits – against the effects of the weapons he says he hasn’t got. Similarly, we know from US intelligence that last autumn he ordered more than 1.2 million doses of the standard antidote for soldiers likely to be exposed to poison gas, and 25 metric tons of powder which makes chemical dust weapons.

We know he has threatened his scientists with death if they talk, and that he has hidden weapons in friendly countries such as Syria. Yet all this evidence is simply dismissed by the British public.

The second myth is that he doesn’t have the missiles to threaten us. But missiles are not necessary. As we have seen from the ricin plot, terrorists can easily be supplied with chemical or biological agents, and Saddam is a godfather of terrorism.

The third myth is that President Bush’s real agenda is to seize the Iraqi oilfields. In view of the known threat posed by Saddam, this theory is truly bizarre. Yes, oil is vital for the west; hence the Gulf War when Saddam invaded Kuwait. It is Saddam who wages wars for oil.

In America, by contrast, the oil interest has meant until now that America turned a blind eye to tyranny as long as the oil kept flowing. Indeed, the oil interest still paralyses any action against Saudi Arabia, a fount of world terror.

These myths are simply irrational. The key fact remains that Saddam has refused to prove he is no longer a menace to our lives and our interests. So why do three quarters of us no longer believe this threat?

There are several explanations. The first is the passage of time since the Gulf War, creating the belief that only a fresh invasion (or the discovery of a nuclear missile with ‘London’ stencilled on its side) can justify action.

The second is the widespread distrust of politicians as unprincipled opportunists. But if that judgment is true here, why should President Bush be risking his political future like this? Why should Mr Blair be setting himself so dangerously against his party, his country and his important friends in Europe?

The third is the failure to understand the reality of Islamist fascism. Many believe this is merely America’s war, and Britain is needlessly getting involved. But look at what is now being unearthed by police in Italy and Spain -- terrorist cells targeting cities all over appeasement-minded Europe.

For the Islamist tiger – being ridden by secular Saddam for all he is worth – is roaring its death threats to ‘Crusaders and Zionists’, or Christians and Jews; in other words, to western civilisation in general.

This is constantly illustrated by the repeated Islamist attacks on Christian communities around the world. Yet few in Britain are aware of this persecution because it is ignored, not only by the media but – astonishingly – by the churches.

Instead, British clerics parrot the fashionable anti-Americanism which invariably blames the west for the misdeeds of the third world, which it casts as the helpless victims of western imperialism.

At a deeper level still, there is now a vast difference between American and European attitudes. The US believes in itself strongly as a nation, is deeply religious and is prepared to fight to defend its values. Europe, by contrast, is post-nationalist, post-Christian (including many bishops) and pacifist.

But in a battle between Islamists who are prepared to kill and to die for their beliefs, and European liberals who have come to believe that all war is bad and must be replaced by supra-national talking-shops and peace at any price, there is no contest.

When a civilisation no longer has the stomach to fight for its existence, and views its own self-defence as unwarranted aggression, it has signed its own death-warrant.

Posted by admin at January 27, 2003