A Journey (69 page)

Forgotten in all the inevitable controversy over Iraq was the impact on other regimes at the time of the action. In early 2003, Libya began its negotiations to come clean on its nuclear and chemical programmes and eventually yielded them up and destroyed them. In October 2003, Iran, at first shocked by the US action, came back to the negotiating table on its nuclear programme for the first time since August 2002. North Korea came back to the six-party talks demanded by President Bush. The activities of A. Q. Khan were the subject of radical action by the Pakistan government and finally shut down. Proliferators and purveyors of WMD material hastily drew in their horns. The adverse consequences of really hard-line American attitudes are well known, but there were also important and benign consequences. People reckoned Bush was tough enough to do anything, and they took notice. As I knew from private conversations with leaders in the Arab world, their reaction at the time, whatever the public stance, was one of silent approbation for an America that appeared to brook no nonsense from anyone. As the conflict continued and the mood of their street turned, so that approbation changed; but they never wanted a weak US president. They knew their own neighbourhood. And a little bit of fear about what America might do was no bad thing.

The chronology of events leading up to March 2003 was marked by the steady build-up to conflict. The US mindset after September 11 had altered radically and fundamentally. The extremism within Islam, based on a perversion of its truth, had declared war on the US. Even more so than those like me on the outside, those inside the American administration were clear: we had to take a wholly new look at the world. States that harboured terrorists or succoured them were potential enemies, as were states engaged in WMD. The possibility of the two coming together – terrorists and so-called ‘rogue’ states developing nuclear, chemical or biological weapons – was too great a risk to contemplate. In a little-noticed move at the 2002 G8, the key nations agreed billions of dollars to protect or eliminate sites of former Soviet states with WMD. Each nation agreed to undertake and did undertake comprehensive anti-terror legislation, tightened money-laundering rules that might be connected with trade in terror or WMD, and bore down on any radical groups fomenting extremism.

At the first meeting with George in February 2001 at Camp David, Iraq was raised in the context of the new sanctions resolution that I described earlier, but there was no great sense of urgency. George was set on building a strong right-wing power base in the US, capable of sustaining him through two terms, and was focused especially on education and tax reform. We got on well, but fairly gingerly. Actually, Cherie probably hit it off better with Laura Bush than I did with George at first. I liked Laura immediately – modest, unassuming, but with obvious true strength just beneath the surface. It can’t have been easy moving into such a powerful family, and Barbara must have made a formidable mother-in-law (though far more lovable than her public image sometimes suggested). Laura had that inner, quiet belief in herself that gave her a thick carapace of toughness for the ordeals that lay ahead.

George had a great sense of humour, was self-effacing and self-deprecatory in an attractive way, but the fact remained he was conservative and I was progressive. There weren’t many social issues we seemed to agree on; and on climate change, we were poles apart, as it were.

It was not my first time at Camp David – I had been there with Bill. But that made it odd too. Last time, Bill and I had been sitting out in the sunshine in February 1998 debating how the centre left could get itself out of its perennial inadequacy of short bursts of power in an otherwise steady line of conservative government. It was exactly the kind of stimulating, intellectual, conceptual conversation that Bill loved, and as ever I would learn constantly, adding my own analysis and always surprised and encouraged by how our thinking converged.

This was not George at all. By the way, this was not because he wasn’t smart; he was very smart. One of the most ludicrous caricatures of George is that he was a dumb idiot who stumbled into the presidency. No one stumbles into that job, and the history of American presidential campaigns is littered with the political corpses of those who were supposed to be brilliant but who nonetheless failed because brilliance is not enough. No one who isn’t clever could survive that ordeal of the nine-month election duel, which itself usually follows a couple of years of hard graft. It’s the same with UK politics, for a different reason: PMQs. An idiot couldn’t survive one session. To survive and hold your head up over a period of time – let’s say a year of being Opposition leader – you have to be clever, significantly past a basic intellectual threshold, otherwise you will be eaten alive.

But to succeed in US politics, or that of the UK, you have to be more than clever. You have to be able to connect and you have to be able to articulate that connection in plain language. The plainness of the language then leads people to look past the brainpower involved. Reagan was clever. Thatcher was clever. And sometimes the very plainness touches something else: a simplicity that is the product of a decisive nature. Now that simplicity can be impulsive; or it can ignore the complexity of the issue; and it can, of course, sometimes lead to the wrong decision. But it isn’t born of dumbness. And you can produce a clarity of decision and action that, in situations calling for such clarity, is both powerful and beneficial. There are leaders who agonise too much; who are forever weighing up; whose consideration of the options becomes an end in itself and a substitute for clarity of decision. Of course it’s good to think before you act, but the thinking has to be of finite duration and the action must follow. This is true in and of itself, but it is also true because when leading a country, or indeed any organisation, failure to act is an action with consequence. Inaction is a decision to maintain the status quo. Maintenance of the status quo has its own result, and usually its own dynamic. So removing Saddam had enormous consequence. Failure to remove him would not have been free of consequence. We can debate the nature of such consequence and how profound it would have been, but unquestionably, there would have been one.

George had immense simplicity in how he saw the world. Right or wrong, it led to decisive leadership. Now you may disagree strongly with the decisions, but the opposite also has its problems.

As we sat outside the main building at Camp David, on the balcony in the February sun, and chatted on a ‘get to know you’ basis, it was obvious he was a world away from Bill Clinton. But he was also tough and clear and knew exactly what he wanted.

The visit to Camp David had been a welcome break in my preparations for the 2001 election, which was shortly to be postponed by foot-and-mouth disease. I had come through a difficult patch following the fuel-duty protests, I was at least ten points ahead in the polls and feeling confident. I could tell he was dealing with me in expectation he would still be dealing with me a year later. So we both wanted to get on with each other.

Camp David is set high up in the woods around Catoctin Mountain Park in over 140 acres. It is a collection of log cabins, very much American-style and well done. The main building houses the president’s eating place, a cinema (where, believe it or not, we watched
Meet the Parents
), and various study and entertainment rooms. It is fully equipped. It has its ranch feel to it, but it can very fast transform itself into a theatre of action.

I liked it. There were plenty of grounds to walk around, paths that weaved in and out of the trees. The media were carefully kept outside and allowed in only for press conferences. There was a gym and a chapel, and the food was good. It was a great place to relax and to scheme, and is only a short helicopter ride from the White House lawn, so its attractions are manifest.

In the months that followed that visit – whose chief news value was my choice of casual clothes, as usual not quite right, and an odd comment by George about us using the same brand of toothpaste – I probably thought more about Iraq than he did.

Since the bombing raid on Baghdad in December 1998, there had been on/off military and diplomatic activity aimed at Saddam, though not with much success. Following my re-election in June 2001, there was a protracted discussion between the US, UK, French, Germans and Russians about the new sanctions regime to get Saddam to allow UN inspectors back into Iraq. There was an ongoing concern about Russian commercial interests. When Vladimir and I discussed sanctions at the July 2001 Genoa G8 summit, he joked he was all in favour of them, provided we compensated him for the $8 billion that Iraq owed Russia.

The US had plans for a repeat exercise of 1998 if Saddam refused to comply, but essentially the whole context was one of steady but not urgent diplomatic pressure, with myself as perhaps the staunchest advocate of strong action, though even I was not thinking in terms of Saddam’s forcible removal.

In July 2001, I even wrote to President Khatami of Iran thanking him for his support for our draft resolution on Iraq. For some time I had been told that Khatami offered a realistic chance of remaking our relationship with Iran and bringing it back into the fold. I was sceptical but willing to try.

In August 2001, US and UK military commanders patrolling the no-fly zones in southern Iraq informed us that the threat to coalition aircraft had increased substantially, and at the very end of August, US F-16 planes were in action over Basra. But none of it made many news headlines.

With the attack on New York and Washington on September 11 2001, all of this changed. As I explained before, suddenly the whole nature of the security threat altered: from one that was low-level, to one that was of supreme significance; from one that could be dealt with in time, to one that was urgent, immediate, pressing and dominant.

At a stroke, the American attitude shifted. Saddam had been an unwelcome reminder of battles past, a foe that we had beaten but left in place, to the disgruntlement of many. But he had not been perceived of as a threat. Now it was not so much that the direct threat increased, but he became bound up in the US belief that so shocking had been the attack, so serious had been its implications, that the world had to be remade. Countries whose governments were once disliked but tolerated became, overnight, potential enemies, to be confronted, made to change attitude, or made to change government.

Above all, there was a sense of an emergency. In this time, the failure to act was indeed an action with its own consequence and that consequence might be profoundly adverse. At that moment, the fear of history’s judgement was not the fear that came with action, but with inaction. How to change the world was a tough challenge to answer; not to answer it, to be paralysed in indecision, was deemed the greater risk, by a large margin.

The immediate question was how to deal with bin Laden, al-Qaeda and the Taliban, but it was obvious that the US was limbering up on the wider issues to do with WMD. In November 2001, President Bush issued a stark general warning to those governments developing WMD; and to Iraq in particular, to let inspectors back in. A cross-party group of senators reminded George in a strongly worded letter in early December 2001, calling for the removal of Saddam, that US policy was regime change.

In January 2002, under pressure, Saddam began the process of reopening negotiations with the UN over weapons inspectors. But his compliance with UN resolutions had been minimal, as the following table compiled for the PLP for discussion at a Cabinet meeting in July 2002 shows.

Table of requirements that Iraq has to meet under various UN Security Council resolutions, and the regime’s record of compliance.

Of course, as ever, as the conspiracy theories abound in this area, it is assumed that the US took a decision to remove Saddam by military force in late 2001, and from then on, war was inevitable. It wasn’t. And it’s just not how politics works. Or human beings. And in the end human beings take political decisions.

What had happened, as I say, was that the US attitude to risk had been turned upside down. Iraq was now definitely on the agenda. There was a predisposition to believe that Saddam was incorrigible. There was the certainty that he had an ongoing WMD programme. There was a belief that the world would be better off with him out of power. All that is for sure. It was still a long way off a decision. Instead of the tortuous and transparently insincere process he engaged in, had Saddam done what Gaddafi had the sense to do in Libya, the issue may have been resolved. If he had thrown his doors open, condemned instead of supported the attack of September 11, made it clear that he understood the rules of the game had fundamentally altered, then he would have found an open mind on the other side of his open door. But then probably he wouldn’t have been Saddam.

The point is: the decision to confront Saddam flowed in the US mind from September 11; but the confrontation could in theory have remained and been successful as a diplomatic exercise.

I know because I was talking to George throughout. He may have thought action at some point was necessary, and towards the end of 2002 it all became a lot clearer to him. But in those early and middle months of 2002, it wasn’t like that. And, as I will recount, even late in 2002 and early 2003, we could still have avoided a conflict. Of course, now people point to the fact there was military planning as showing that the diplomacy was all a show. Such planning was inevitable and right, not because war was inevitable but because it was an option and that option had to be planned for.