From time to time since the US-led intervention in Iraq, people have popped up to say that the human costs of leaving Saddam in power were never part of the rationale for going to war, that this was merely a post hoc justification once WMD were not found. Being of a helpful disposition, on some of these occasions I would pop up in my turn to point out to those saying this sort of thing, and to others who might be misled by what they were saying, that there was clear evidence to the contrary, particularly in key speeches made by George W Bush and Tony Blair, and that for many of us who supported the Iraq war the potential costs of leaving Saddam in power were indeed central to our support.
Well, now we know. By this I don’t mean that we now know that the costs of non-intervention would have been greater than the costs of intervention have in fact been; merely that we now know that the costs of non-intervention could have been greater than the costs of intervention have been. Why we know is because of Syria – and I direct you to two pieces, one by Hopi Sen and the other by Terry Glavin, in case you haven’t already seen them. ‘Where is the outrage of the humanitarian left?’ Hopi asks, referring to the death rate in Syria. And:
The awful truth is that inaction and intervention both have terrible costs, and those who decide between them cannot ever truly know what will result. Some forgot that in the last decade, choosing to believe that only intervention could have a terrible price. I don’t forget the reverse now.
No, they didn’t forget; they just didn’t want to know. Because this was a way of trying to discredit the bona fide reasons of those who supported regime change in Iraq. Terry, for his part, has more about the present human costs in Syria. Clive James wrote a while back:
those appalled by the moral cost of toppling a tyrannical regime are still stuck with counting the moral cost incurred by leaving it alone.
Except that few of them have ever wanted to count this second cost. It has been the great falsehood of the liberal-left during the last decade, and if you detect a certain reticence about that now, you won’t be the only one who does. (Thanks, RB, for the James link.)