Iraq: Future Strategic Relationship

The hon. Gentleman will expect me to agree with him yet again. The cost of the war will rightly be audited in terms of lives lost, the impact on families and the actual money spent, but—I think the hon. Member for Woodspring got this wrong—it must also be audited in terms of this country's foreign policy objectives and our influence going forward. As my hon. Friend the Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Sir Robert Smith) said in an intervention on the hon. Member for Woodspring, the cost in Afghanistan alone has been huge, and the military overstretch means that we have been unable to be as effective in Afghanistan as we could have been. There has also been an impact throughout the middle east, including Iran. Hon. Members on both sides of the House are rightly worried about Iran and how emboldened it has become, but I submit that without the Iraq war, Iran would be far weaker than it is today and be far less able to throw its weight around. It is rubbing its hands in glee about how power has shifted across the middle east. Tony Blair promised us that with the war would come a major effort to obtain a middle east peace settlement. He said that time and again from the Dispatch Box. Nearly six years on, what do we have? We have seen little progress. Mr. Blair's great friend, President Bush, turned his attention to a peace process in the middle east only in the final year of his presidency—so much for the promises that we were given in this House by Prime Minister Blair. That has been a massive failure in foreign policy. One hopes that the Annapolis process will not be completely damaged by the appalling situation in Gaza. When I went to Israel last November, I heard that there had been some progress with the peace talks. I am happy to acknowledge that. However, it has taken some time and the development is still very fragile. Let us look at the impact on terror and on terrorist movements across the world. In an exchange with the Secretary of State—again, he was unfortunately unable to answer me—I made the point that the Government were warned at the time that if they went into Iraq that would feed international terrorism. I think that it is a fairly objective judgment to say that world terrorism has been strengthened by the war in Iraq. I deeply regret that. It was a huge mistake that has fed jihadists around the world and is still a huge weapon to them in recruiting people to their cause. The most ironic factor is the cost to our relationship with the United States. If there was one secret justification for what happened, it was Tony Blair's desire to stand shoulder to shoulder with President Bush. He wanted this country to be friendly and powerful, cementing the special relationship. Now we have a President-elect who was against the war and who described it as a ““dumb war””. That is one of the major lessons that we should learn: Presidents of America change and politics change. Yes, the Americans are our friends. They should be our greatest friends. We share so much with them and we share their values, but the true friend speaks candidly, is frank and tells the truth. Our failure to be honest and truthful with President Bush has not strengthened our relationship, but undermined it. What I fear most is that President Obama will look at this country and say, ““I'm afraid you made the wrong judgment. You could have helped to stop this war or have prevented it in the first place, but you failed to do that.”” That means that we are not in strong position with the new President, and I deeply regret that. There are many other costs that I could talk about, such as the impact on security in this country with respect to Muslim communities and the damage done to British politics by the way the Labour and Conservative parties seem to ignore public opinion. However, I want to conclude by making the case for an inquiry. The Government have said that there will be an inquiry, but their refusals to say when it will happen or what the criteria will be for setting it up do them no credit whatsoever. It is time that the Government came clean about when an inquiry will be held. The Secretary of State's failure to say even what level of troops we need to have left in Iraq before an inquiry will be triggered is quite shocking. I hope that he will go back to the Prime Minister and say, ““Parliament wants to know when an inquiry will be set up.”” Until we get an answer, we will continue to harry him and his colleagues in this House.