Any war demands morality

In reporting the parliamentary debates on Iraq, it was right to give the greatest coverage to speeches in the Commons. But a reading of the House of Lords Hansard, recording a debate more contemplative than party-political and based on a wide variety of first-hand knowledge of the Middle East, may show more clearly the moral basis of the conflicting views. For there can be no doubt that everyone who presents a case for or against war, immediate or in the future, presents it as a moral case.

Any moral judgment must arise from a deeply felt emotional conviction, not merely from calculation, though to be convincing to others it must also be based on facts. One moral argument running through the Lords' debate was, unsurprisingly, the despotic barbarism of Saddam Hussein's regime. No one doubts that, or doubts the suffering of the people of Iraq. And the horrors of the regime were certainly deeply felt to constitute a moral scandal. But there were many who doubted if such considerations alone were sufficient justification for an aggressive war, whose aim, if these considerations were the sole motive would be a change of regime. Other justifications must be sought.

And, of course, the Government's official war aim now is that weapons of mass destruction must be given up. If this involves a change of regime, so much the better, but that is not top priority. What, then, is the moral imperative that demands disarmament?

In Wednesday's debate it seemed tacitly agreed that the language of a 'war' on terrorism was misleading. Faced with the immediate prospect of real war, the metaphor was no longer appropriate, especially as no substantial evidence had been produced to link Iraq with al-Qaeda, and as international terrorism has its source and inspiration in more than one place. This separation of war on Iraq from 'war' on terrorism showed a significant difference between the thinking in Britain and that of George Bush (though apparently not of a majority of Americans).

The justification for war, it emerged, was twofold: first that possession by Iraq of weapons of mass destruction posed a direct and immediate threat to this country, among others; second, that continued possession of these weapons was in contravention of UN Security Council Resolution 1441, mandatory on Iraq, (though not on Israel). The first of these would, if established, satisfy one of the crucial criteria for a just war; the second would ensure that the war would be at any rate legitimate.

Lawful authority is another criteria for a war to be just, and, since the second world war, the agreed authority is the United Nations, however hesitant and inefficient it may seem. Much of the moral passion in Wednesday's debate was the fear that if war against Iraq was not sanctioned by a further UN resolution that would be the end of the UN. Frequent reference was made to the fact that, for all its shortcomings, the embryonic international law under which we now live is all we have, and to let it die would be the murder of all hope of peace in the future. The argument about Iraq became an argument about the future of international relations as a whole. The Labour peer, Lord Brennan, spoke of the value underpinning the whole debate: 'I, for one, do not want politicians, however well-intentioned... to make decisions about Iraq which destroy the international authority of the United Nations, returning us to the very chaos we fought to avoid only 50 years ago.'

However, this desire for legitimacy under international law was regarded by some as a mere facade, 'legal fictions designed to cover up the drive to war', to quote Lord Skidelsky. For him, and others, the moral passion came from a quite different conviction - that America has plans to change the whole political framework of the Middle East, establishing 'a long-term US rule in the region, with Israel as its junior partner'. The moral principle here is anti-imperialism.

For me, the most convincing argument against a pre-emptive attack on Iraq is a consideration of the consequences in the rest of the Middle East and beyond, regardless of what America's long-term aims might be. No one has a greater understanding of that part of the world than Lord Wright of Richmond, formerly head of the Foreign Office and ambassador once in Syria and once in Saudi Arabia.

He spoke of the high risk that an immediate attack on Iraq would be seen by the Islamic world as a direct attack on Islam, thus fuelling and seeming to justify further terrorist attacks, not only against Israel, but against the West. This danger seems to me so acute and so imminent that, by itself, it constitutes a moral imperative to refrain from attacking Iraq unless it is truly certain that a threat from Saddam Hussein is upon us.

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