Britain’s intervention in Iraq in 2003 alongside the United States has hit the headlines forudmore than fourteen years. It shook up British domestic politics again in August 2015, when LabourudParty leadership candidate – now Leader – Jeremy Corbyn expressed a wish that the Labour leadersudwho had made the decision for and led the way to war make a public apology to the families of theudvictims, going as far as to say that they should be prosecuted for war crimes.udMilitary interventions have multiplied in the last five years: in Libya in 2011, in Mali inud2013, and in the Central African Republic in 2014, without any reference whatsoever to the BritishAmericanudintervention in Iraq. With regard to Syria, however, the opposite held true, with endlessudreferences to Iraq forcing the Prime Minister to abandon plans for intervention.udOn 21 August 2013, Bashar al-Assad used chemical weapons against his own people: 1429uddied, of whom 426 were children. The use of these prohibited weapons was observed byudhumanitarian organisations and journalists on the ground. As French political scientist PierreudHassner rightfully wrote, “there was bloodshed and intervention by foreign powers”1ud. In the West,udthe public responded with an outpouring of emotion - and yet that emotion seemed muted, flat. Theudcrimes were there, impossible to deny or justify, and yet Barack Obama remained on holiday.udWestern leaders expressed their support for intervention in Syria, yet hastened to add that theyudwanted to seek the approval of their respective Parliaments, even where such approval was notudrequired under fundamental legislation. Among them was British Prime Minister David Cameron,udwho did not want to bear responsibility for military intervention in Syria and who could notudoverlook the fact that the British public was averse to the idea of any new foreign intervention.udThat position was not shared by the French, who wanted to go in.udEvents played out just as they did in 2003, but in reverse. This time around, it was theudleaders who were hesitant, and the British public refused to be drawn into something that they didudnot fully understand: not because they were blind to the images or insensitive to the suffering of itsudvictims, but simply because they did not want to be manipulated, demanding “proof” that had notudbeen tampered with: the first and lasting legacy of the 2003 Iraq intervention. Even theudunprecedented online publication of evidence by the British, US and French intelligence servicesudmade no difference! The Syrian Minister for Foreign Affairs jeered at the West’s weak evidence,udsaying that “what the US Administration deems to be irrefutable evidence […] is nothing more thanudold stories disseminated by terrorists for over a week, with all the lies, fabrications and made-upudtales that they contain”; for Damascus, this was “a superpower […] naively misleading its people onudthe basis of non-existent evidence”ud2ud.udThe Syria issue was not just a question of insufficient or dubious evidence; above all, it wasuda political issue: the second legacy of the 2003 intervention. Neither the general public – thenudsuffering from intervention fatigue – nor Parliaments or leaders wanted to back a venture that couldudprove dangerous, and for which no set end point was in sight. The Russian mediation solution –udplacing Syria’s chemical weapons stocks under international controls and destroying them3ud– with alludits hallmarks of honourable surrender, was met with relief from all sides, raising the inevitableudquestion of whether this was a new Munich, and the end of humanitarian intervention on theudground.udIn Britain, the shadow of Iraq hung heavy so over the House of Commons debate on 29udAugust 2013, that David Cameron noted that Jack Straw, Blair’s Foreign Affairs minister,udcommented that “the fact was that there was an egregious intelligence failure, and it has had profound consequences, not only across the Middle East but in British politics, through the frayingudof those bonds of trust between the electors and the elected that are so essential to a healthyuddemocracy”4ud.udDoubtless secretly relieved by the Commons’ opposition, Cameron then refused to interveneudin Syria under such circumstances, despite the crossing by Bashar al-Assad of what Barack Obamaudhad laid down as a ‘red line’, at a press conference in August 2012: the confirmed use of chemicaludweapons (the very opposite of Blair’s decision in 2003). The hangover of British-Americanudintervention in 2003 triumphed over the realities of Syrian abuses, both in the United Kingdom andudin the United States.udIt is on this basis that I intend to explore the notion of the dark shadow left by Iraq, as theudintervention in Iraq seems to mark a turning point in Western foreign policy; from that point on,udsuch interventions would be rarer, more limited in their scope, and would avoid boots on theudground.udThe major powers may well now lie beyond the West, with the possible exception of theudUnited States. Humanitarian interventionism and the right to intervene may perhaps be a thing ofudthe past, and all this can be traced back to the British-US Iraq intervention of 2003. The migrantudcrisis, which has highlighted the failure to act of the European institutions and the United Nations,udis perhaps an early illustration of this shift.udWhy might this be described as a “shadow”? For three distinct reasons: the first, and perhapsudthe least palatable, is that the operation was a political and military failure. Had it been a success,udrealism may have rendered the question of means secondary. Yet the means used wereudquestionable, constituting the second reason to describe Iraq’s legacy as a shadow. The decision toudgo to war, not being self-evident, had to be justified by legal contortions and the manipulation ofudevidence. The lies, which may well even be state-sanctioned lies that implicated governments andudintelligence agencies, emerged alongside the Inquiries’ conclusions, thereby forming the thirdudreason. This explains the scandal of the delayed publication of the Chilcot report. The ChilcotudInquiry was tasked in 2009 by Prime Minister Gordon Brown with identifying the political failingsudin the UK that had led up the decision to intervene in Iraq. What is shocking today is that theudChilcot report has still not been published, six years after the final hearings: a scandal that couldudshake British democracy to its very foundations.
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