one. Strangely the environment appeared fairly benign, initially.
The major deployment, where we suffered really serious loss of life, came in ’05, ’06, in the south in Helmand, but at that stage it was limited. And it was a pretty straightforward decision to make to send the troops into Afghanistan.
There was no issue of legality. It was a war of necessity. Iraq was infinitely more difficult because it was a war of choice.
As Foreign Secretary, it was Mr Straw’s role to present legislation approving the decision to go to war to a reluctant House of Commons. He fought hard to get United Nations approval, and even in early 2003 hoped that war could be avoided. When the time came to decide whether Britain should join America in a unilateral invasion, he was fully aware of the weight of the responsibility that rested on his shoulders. ‘It was by far and away the most important decision I have ever taken,’ he says, made even more agonising by the fact that his wife and children opposed the war.
Although he failed to win over much of the country, he was at the time genuinely convinced that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, a belief he now concedes was incorrect.
As he awaits the verdict of the Chilcot Inquiry into his role in the drama that was the decision to go to war in Iraq, he is philosophical about the likelihood that he will be blamed, and knows he is still a hate figure to some:
I made the decision I made, which was to support the war, and I have to take the responsibilities that flow from that. I think it’s pathetic to see people wringing their hands and pretending they weren’t there. Either you’re there or you’re not. If you make a decision of that magnitude and the consequences were as adverse as they have been, you have to accept your responsibility; nothing else to do.
The question I sometimes face is: If you knew then what you know now, would you have made the same decision? Well, no, of course I wouldn’t, but that’s true of a myriad of decisions. You don’t have that luxury when you’re a decision-maker. You make decisions looking forward not back.
What I sought to do in my evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry was to try to explain why I came to the decisions I came to in what were circumstances of very great uncertainty about the future.
The deceiver was Saddam Hussein. Obviously the whole prism through which Iraq is seen would have been completely different had a great onslaught of WMD been found, but, anyway, it wasn’t to be.
I knew that, had I taken a contrary view, I could have stopped the UK’s involvement. There’s no doubt about it. I [could have] said in early March to Tony: ‘Look here, Tony, I’m not going to support this’ – and, after all, I’d seen everything – ‘I’m not going to support this, you’ve got to decide; if you go ahead with this I’ll resign.’
If I’d resigned, the government wouldn’t have got a majority and it may have brought the government down. I’m not being precious about that, it’s just a reality. So I was aware of that responsibility.
With the benefit of hindsight I wish we had known what we subsequently discovered, but that’s hypothetical. I knew what I was doing. I made a decision, I’m accountable for it.
People will shout at me on the Tube sometimes, with less frequency these days, and say I’m a war criminal. It’s much less pleasant for my family, particularly given the fact that my wife and both children opposed the war.
They were amazingly loyal actually. But it was a very difficult period.
It has been five years since Mr Straw gave evidence to Chilcot, and, like everyone else, he is baffled by the delay. ‘It’s just very unfortunate it’s been going on as long as it has been. It’s not fair on the bereaved relatives of people who were killed there for it to have dragged on this long.’
In 2006, Mr Straw was taken out of the Foreign Office and despatched to be Leader of the House. He was not
The major deployment, where we suffered really serious loss of life, came in ’05, ’06, in the south in Helmand, but at that stage it was limited. And it was a pretty straightforward decision to make to send the troops into Afghanistan.
There was no issue of legality. It was a war of necessity. Iraq was infinitely more difficult because it was a war of choice.
As Foreign Secretary, it was Mr Straw’s role to present legislation approving the decision to go to war to a reluctant House of Commons. He fought hard to get United Nations approval, and even in early 2003 hoped that war could be avoided. When the time came to decide whether Britain should join America in a unilateral invasion, he was fully aware of the weight of the responsibility that rested on his shoulders. ‘It was by far and away the most important decision I have ever taken,’ he says, made even more agonising by the fact that his wife and children opposed the war.
Although he failed to win over much of the country, he was at the time genuinely convinced that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, a belief he now concedes was incorrect.
As he awaits the verdict of the Chilcot Inquiry into his role in the drama that was the decision to go to war in Iraq, he is philosophical about the likelihood that he will be blamed, and knows he is still a hate figure to some:
I made the decision I made, which was to support the war, and I have to take the responsibilities that flow from that. I think it’s pathetic to see people wringing their hands and pretending they weren’t there. Either you’re there or you’re not. If you make a decision of that magnitude and the consequences were as adverse as they have been, you have to accept your responsibility; nothing else to do.
The question I sometimes face is: If you knew then what you know now, would you have made the same decision? Well, no, of course I wouldn’t, but that’s true of a myriad of decisions. You don’t have that luxury when you’re a decision-maker. You make decisions looking forward not back.
What I sought to do in my evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry was to try to explain why I came to the decisions I came to in what were circumstances of very great uncertainty about the future.
The deceiver was Saddam Hussein. Obviously the whole prism through which Iraq is seen would have been completely different had a great onslaught of WMD been found, but, anyway, it wasn’t to be.
I knew that, had I taken a contrary view, I could have stopped the UK’s involvement. There’s no doubt about it. I [could have] said in early March to Tony: ‘Look here, Tony, I’m not going to support this’ – and, after all, I’d seen everything – ‘I’m not going to support this, you’ve got to decide; if you go ahead with this I’ll resign.’
If I’d resigned, the government wouldn’t have got a majority and it may have brought the government down. I’m not being precious about that, it’s just a reality. So I was aware of that responsibility.
With the benefit of hindsight I wish we had known what we subsequently discovered, but that’s hypothetical. I knew what I was doing. I made a decision, I’m accountable for it.
People will shout at me on the Tube sometimes, with less frequency these days, and say I’m a war criminal. It’s much less pleasant for my family, particularly given the fact that my wife and both children opposed the war.
They were amazingly loyal actually. But it was a very difficult period.
It has been five years since Mr Straw gave evidence to Chilcot, and, like everyone else, he is baffled by the delay. ‘It’s just very unfortunate it’s been going on as long as it has been. It’s not fair on the bereaved relatives of people who were killed there for it to have dragged on this long.’
In 2006, Mr Straw was taken out of the Foreign Office and despatched to be Leader of the House. He was not
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