A beacon is lit in Iraq. But not in your names, Robin, Douglas and the BBC

Times On Line
 
Michael Gove

February 01, 2005

Victory in the War on Terror depends on nurturing democracy on the banks of the Tigris

WHO WON the Iraqi elections? The formal counting won’t be over for days. But the result’s already clear. Iraq won.

And who lost? Well, a full list would take up all this column, but, for starters, I would say that the people who seemed a little glum yesterday morning include Saddam Hussein, Robin Cook, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, George Galloway, Osama bin Laden, Douglas Hurd, Bashar al-Assad, Menzies Campbell, Jacques Chirac, BBC News and Current Affairs, Robert Fisk and Sean Penn.

On Sunday Iraq enjoyed freedom. And enjoy seems to be the mot juste. Iraqis celebrated their chance to vote, revelled in it, embraced it. But for Robin, George, Douglas, Menzies, Jacques, Sean and those who joined them in opposition to the Iraq war there can’t be any great cause for celebration, can there? For none of this happened in their name.

Women in an Arab nation taking their place as free individuals alongside men, their voices and votes at last given equal weight. But not in your name, Robin. The Kurdish people, victims of chemical attack, ethnic cleansing, savage repression, at last voting to take their equal, respected, place in a new Iraq. But not in your name, George. The Shias of the south, after years in which their culture was marginalised, their lives held cheap, their faith mocked and their relatives tortured, now, at last, assuming a share of power in their own land, through the ballot box. But not in your name, Douglas. And an Arab nation, defying the racist stereotypes of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s camel corps, shows itself not just ready but enthusiatic for democracy. It is a victory for the principle that human rights can have a universal application. But not in your name, Menzies.

Just as the Spanish Civil War and the Cold War compelled people to take sides between democracy and oppression, so the Iraq war forced a choice on us. All of us. It was a choice that became inevitable after the events of September 11.

It was easy for most people to express their horror at the events of 9/11. It was natural for most, although not all, to feel sympathy for America. It was said that the world would never be the same again. But for all too many the world hadn’t really changed. As they proved by their opposition to the effort to change it for the better.

The September 11 attack underlined, in the most terrible fashion, the consequences of our not-so-benign neglect of the Middle East and the wider Islamic world. From Morocco to Iran a huge swath of humanity was sunk in oppression, denied not just democracy but freedom of speech, property rights, freedom of association, freedom from fear and freedom to hope. All that this region exported was oil, refugees and terror. Within this region dictators left their people in misery, pocketed Western aid and used their country’s natural resources to pursue, whenever they could, chemical, biological and even nuclear weapons programmes. Some of these regimes were direct sponsors of state terror. Others, such as Saudi Arabia, incubated terrorism by maintaining a corrupt and oppressive rule that gave fanatics a cause and then paid them to divert their energies elsewhere.

In the interests of the world, and especially the people of the Middle East, their countries could no longer remain thieves’ kitchens and political slums. Action had to be taken to tilt the balance in the region towards freedom. And there were very good reasons to start in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Taleban had provided the launchpad for 9/11. Saddam had made a career out of defying international order, had made a mockery of the United Nations, and was intent, as soon as possible, on making good his ambitions to acquire an arsenal of truly terrifying weaponry.

It has become a commonplace to assert that America squandered the world’s sympathy by going on to tackle Iraq after dealing with Afghanistan. But to wage war on Afghanistan without going farther would have been to squander something far more valuable, the moral high ground. Any old nation bent on revenge would have settled on Afghanistan. And left it there. But a nation determined to tackle the real root causes of terror had to go on. Because it is only by securing a decisive shift towards democracy across the region that the misery of the Middle East’s peoples can be relieved, and the threat to the rest of us brought to an end. Victory in the War on Terror depends not just on the elimination of regimes which sponsor terrorism, but on the nurturing of democracy’s roots in the hills of Kandahar, the banks of the Tigris and beyond.

Those of us who believe this to be a noble and worthwhile exercise, indeed the only strategy likely to offer a long-term answer in the War on Terror, have hitherto been relatively isolated voices. The leader writers of this newspaper, far-sighted liberals such as David Aaronovitch, Nick Cohen and Christopher Hitchens. Oh, and George W. Bush. We have not been without our critics. I’ve listed a few, just a very few, of their names above.

For the past few months, whenever discussion has turned to the wisdom of the Iraq war, or the prospects for Iraq’s future, in our newspapers and on our airwaves, the critics’ voices have been dominant. And their opposition to what has been happening doom-laden.

But there are other voices who were not heard, indeed had not been heard for many years. On Sunday they spoke at last. The people of Iraq told Robin, Menzies, Douglas and George something I had been longing to hear. Their message was simple.

When you tell us that it was wrong to get rid of Saddam, foolish to press ahead with an election, naive to believe in Arab democracy, you exercise a valuable, cherishable freedom. But not in our name.

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