Tony Rakhal-Fras­er

An is­sue fac­ing British civil­i­sa­tion and the In­ter­na­tion­al Crim­i­nal Court is whether they will force British Prime Min­is­ter Tony Blair (1997-2007) to face the ICC for war crimes in the man­ner that the likes of Charles Tay­lor (Liberia), Rudolph Hess (Nazi), Sad­dam Hus­sein (Iraq), Radovan Karadz­ic (Bosnia), Pol Pot (Cam­bo­dia�Khmer Rouge) and dozens oth­ers have been called up­on or should have been to do.

The charges could re­volve around the killing of an es­ti­mat­ed 150,000 Iraqis, an un­known/un­stat­ed num­ber be­ing civil­ians, and for what a writer in the UK Guardian has sug­gest­ed as a vi­o­la­tion of the Hague/Gene­va Con­ven­tion on war for a fun­da­men­tal trans­for­ma­tion of the Iraqi econ­o­my and so­ci­ety dur­ing the pe­ri­od of oc­cu­pa­tion.

One in­evitable is­sue will arise in the un­like­ly event that Blair is made to ac­count will in­evitably be whether sim­i­lar charges will con­front US Pres­i­dent George W Bush, who in­sti­gat­ed the in­va­sion.

Those are se­ri­ous is­sues for the lead­er­ship and peo­ple of West­ern civil­i­sa­tion to deal with and will be some­thing of a seis­mic shift in in­ter­na­tion­al pol­i­tics if Blair and oth­ers are made to ac­count. The is­sues arise as a fall out of the re­port of the Sir John Chilcot com­mis­sion ap­point­ed by Prime Min­is­ter Gor­don Browne (2009) to ex­am­ine the UK's in­volve­ment in the in­va­sion of Iraq. Chilcot found a range of ac­tions by the Blair gov­ern­ment ill-ad­vised and fraud­u­lent.

Chilcot says it was not the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of his com­mis­sion to pro­nounce on the le­gal­i­ty of the in­va­sion, such a de­ci­sion be­ing left for a ful­ly con­vened in­ter­na­tion­al crim­i­nal court. How­ev­er, the re­port states that the "le­gal bases for a UK mil­i­tary ac­tion were far from sat­is­fac­to­ry."

For­mer British for­eign sec­re­tary, Philip Ham­mond (new Chan­cel­lor of the Ex­che­quer) analysed that one of the con­se­quences of the in­va­sion was that a per­cent­age of the ap­prox­i­mate­ly 400,000 Iraqi sol­diers turned loose with­out jobs and bear­ing a grudge against west­ern civil­i­sa­tion now forms a crit­i­cal el­e­ment of the ter­ror­ist Isis:

"It is clear a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of for­mer Ba'athist of­fi­cers have formed the pro­fes­sion­al core of Daesh (Isis) in Syr­ia and Iraq, and have giv­en that or­gan­i­sa­tion the mil­i­tary ca­pa­bil­i­ty it has shown in con­duct­ing its op­er­a­tions."

But David Whyte–Prof of So­cio-le­gal Stud­ies at the School of Law and So­cial Jus­tice, Uni­ver­si­ty of Liv­er­pool and Gregg Mut­titt–au­thor of Fu­el on the Fire: Oil and Pol­i­tics in Oc­cu­pied Iraq con­tend that the Chilcot com­mis­sion avoid­ed deal­ing with what the writ­ers say was the ob­jec­tive of the in­va­sion, that be­ing to get con­trol of Iraqi oil then "off-lim­its" from the con­trol of west­ern mul­ti-na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions.

"The fu­ture shape of the Iraqi oil in­dus­try will af­fect oil mar­kets, and the func­tion­ing of OPEC, in both of which we have a vi­tal in­ter­est," Whyte and Mut­titt quote a for­eign of­fice strat­e­gy pa­per 2003 as stat­ing.

"In the end, at­tempts by Britain and the US to force a law through that le­gal­ized oil pri­va­ti­za­tion failed. The law was not passed, large­ly be­cause of a pop­u­lar Iraqi cam­paign against it. It was then de­cid­ed to sign long-term con­tracts even with­out any le­gal ba­sis for do­ing so. Iraq's oil in­dus­try is large­ly now run–il­le­gal­ly–by com­pa­nies like BP, Shell and Exxon­Mo­bil," state the au­thors.

Se­nior British diplo­mat in­volved in the ne­go­ti­a­tions, Sir Je­re­my Green­stock, de­nied on BBC's Hard Talk that oil was a mo­ti­va­tion; but ac­knowl­edged that it be­came a tremen­dous ben­e­fit to the vic­tors, British and Amer­i­can cor­po­ra­tions.

In it­self, the re­port of Sir John Chilcot is quite con­clu­sive about UK's (Blair) par­tic­i­pa­tion in the in­va­sion with the US (Bush).

�2 The UK chose to join the in­va­sion of Iraq be­fore peace­ful op­tions had been ex­haust­ed

�2 The judg­ments of Iraq's pos­si­ble hold­ing of Weapons of Mass De­struc­tion (WMD) were pre­sent­ed with cer­tain­ty which were not jus­ti­fied

�2 The con­se­quences of the In­va­sion were un­der­es­ti­mat­ed–plan­ning for Iraq af­ter the demise of Sad­dam Hus­sein was whol­ly in­ad­e­quate

�2 The pol­i­cy de­ci­sions on Iraq were made on flawed in­tel­li­gence and as­sess­ments and were not chal­lenged and should have been

�2 The UK mil­i­tary role in Iraq end­ed a very long way from suc­cess and the neg­a­tive con­se­quences con­tin­ue to this day

�2 Mil­i­tary ac­tion in Iraq might have been nec­es­sary at some point but not in March 2003 there was no im­mi­nent threat from Sad­dam Hus­sein, a strat­e­gy of con­tain­ment could have been adopt­ed and con­tin­ued for some time.

The com­men­ta­tors note that by the first year of oc­cu­pa­tion, there were more than 60 UK com­pa­nies work­ing in Iraq, on con­tracts worth an es­ti­mat­ed $2.6b.

�2 Over $8b of that Iraqi oil rev­enue was lost, un­ac­count­ed for in a process de­scribed thus by Blair's rep­re­sen­ta­tive in the CPA, Sir Je­re­my Green­stock: "A lot of cash was go­ing round in suit­cas­es to be dis­pensed to Iraqis, not all of which was ac­count­ed for."

�2 Blair seemed to labour un­der the im­pres­sion that mere­ly ask­ing the UN to pass a res­o­lu­tion had as much le­gal va­lid­i­ty as a res­o­lu­tion that had been passed.

It should be re­mem­bered that Blair even­tu­al­ly ad­mit­ted that Sad­dam did not pos­sess WMD and that un­told num­bers of Iraqi civil­ians were mass mur­dered, he ac­cept­ed re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for all of the wrong de­ci­sions tak­en.

The present can be a trans­for­ma­tion­al mo­ment in in­ter­na­tion­al pol­i­tics if lead­ers of West­ern civil­i­sa­tion are made to face up to al­le­ga­tions of the vi­o­la­tion of in­ter­na­tion­al law gov­ern­ing the con­duct of war.