It is entirely consistent to be against this invasion - yet hope for a speedy victory in the interests of the Iraqis
Jonathan Freedland Wednesday March 19, 2003 The Guardian
These will be dark days for everyone. Darkest for those caught up in combat - whether they are the civilians whose homes and families are about to be bombarded in an unprecedented display of "shock and awe", or the uniformed men and women dropping the bombs. They are both about to enter the dizzying, topsy-turvy world of war, where death could come at any moment.
But there is darkness closer to home, too. In these days of anxiety and fear, where should those who have opposed this war put themselves? How should they cope with the coming days of shock and awe?
For some, the start of war will mean an end to the anti-war campaign. For them, to do anything less would be to undermine our armed forces just as they place themselves in harm's way.
But this is one of those cliches of political protocol that makes little logical sense. As Robin Cook put it in his spellbinding resignation speech to the Commons: "It is false to argue that only those who support war support our troops. It is entirely legitimate to support our troops while seeking an alternative to the conflict that will put those troops at risk." Indeed, opponents of war can say it is precisely because they value the lives of our service personnel that they wish they were not risking their lives in a questionable cause.
It's true that anti-war movements have sometimes made the mistake of failing to support troops exposed to danger. The treatment of US soldiers returning from duty in Vietnam - often ostracised as if personally responsible for that tragedy - is a shaming example. But an anti-war position hardly entails such behaviour. Those who believe this war is unjust have no beef with the men and women fighting it - only with the leaders who gave them the order.
Others say that a lack of domestic support will weaken morale: how can soldiers fight a war knowing they lack the backing of the folks at home? Again, this is one of those truisms that may not be true. Under this logic, no peace movement could ever exist when it is most needed - during wartime. The Vietnam case stands as evidence of the valuable, and patriotic, duty an anti-war camp can perform in bringing a wrong-headed conflict to a close.
More sensitively, should those who have argued against this war want it to go well or badly? Only the pettiest and most small-minded peacenik would want American or British troops to die just to bring the satisfaction of saying "I told you so". Those who wish this war had never happened should now want it to end as swiftly and painlessly as possible - in a US-British victory. The ideal outcome would be an instant decapitation of Saddam and his vicious regime, leaving the body of Iraqi society intact. The longer the war drags on, the more pounding that is inflicted, the more Iraqi civilians will die.
Supporting the troops and hoping for victory: many in the anti-war camp will fear all this sounds too much like giving up. And the pressure to buckle will be immense: the drop in anti-war sentiment recorded in yesterday's Guardian poll suggests it's already working its magic. Blair's "heroic" efforts to get a second UN resolution, anti-French prejudice, the patriotic surge as "our boys" set off for battle - each has played its part in boosting support for war.
All of this will be hard to resist. There will be a momentum, even excitement, to war once the bombs drop and the TV newsmen get deep into their sandpits. Nevertheless, critics of this war have to keep up their own fight. No task will be more crucial than the vigilant protection of the truth as it suffers its very own aerial bombardment.
An early example has come in the bunkum repeated as gospel about France. Over and over ministers tell us that Jacques Chirac is to blame for military action: if it hadn't been for his threatened veto at the UN, we would now be at peace. This is a reversal of the facts that is Orwellian in its sweep. The second resolution France sought to block - and which may well have fallen anyway - was not, as Jack Straw keeps implying, a pro-peace motion but a mandate for war. It would only have prevented hostilities if we believe that Saddam, faced with a more united security council, would instantly have surrendered and fled Baghdad - surely the only outcome that would have stopped Washington going to war.Given his current refusal to budgem, that hardly looks plausible.
Yet to listen to the British government, it was a dead cert: the war was about to cancelled, if only the pesky French had not got in the way. It's nonsense - and every critic of the war needs to keep saying so.
Above all, war sceptics need to be braced for the victory that we hope will come soon. Chances are, Iraqis will greet their liberators with flowers and tears of delight. The "torture chambers and rape rooms" that George Bush spoke of on Monday night will be revealed. We will hear confirmed what we already know: that Saddam is one of the cruellest butchers to walk the face of the earth.
But we should be prepared now for what the pro-war camp will say as these pictures emerge. Gloatingly, they will tell us our "credibility is destroyed", as Melanie Phillips wrote in the Daily Mail this week. "Saddam's apparatus of terror" will shatter "the whole world view of the left".
We need to be ready for that. When the time comes, we will have to remind our accusers that we did not question this war because we believed Saddam was a cuddly grandpa: we knew the depths of his depravity. Our doubts resided elsewhere. For one thing, we never believed that Iraqi liberation was the real motive of this war. Witness Bush's address, in which the humanitarian argument was jumbled up among the old, bogus ones: Baghdad's links with al-Qaida and the direct threat posed by Iraq to America's security. If the pro-war camp says such concerns are academic - who cares about motive, so long as the end result is the same? - we need to have an answer to that too. It is this: our fear is that the Bush administration, given its intentions, cannot be trusted to get Iraq's future right. Intention has an effect on outcome, and if this war is being fought only peripherally for the benefit of the Iraqi people that fact will have an impact on the post-war settlement. Of course, almost any new arrangement will be an improvement on Saddam. But two arguments made repeatedly these last few months will still hold firm: the price in Iraqi deaths may well be too high and other, less lethal means were possible.
It will be hard to say all this once the killing begins in earnest: the drama of war will make opposition look pale and passe. But doubters should hold their nerve. Our reason for opposition was never that victory would not come easily: most predicted it would. We feared instead for what that victory would cost and what would happen afterwards - and those fears still stand.