Benn and the Iraq debate

I like to think this blog is a market leader in attacking revered octogenarians. So it is with Tony Benn, whose latest volume of diaries I have lately written about in several posts. The thinking former Tory minister George Walden nicely observed in a sparkling memoir some years ago that Benn, Michael Foot, Enoch Powell and the doggedly pro-imperialist Julian Amery "represented the worst of their generation, escapologists from reality who were unwilling to stare the truth of Britain's position in the face and who made a career by bamboozling the impressionable". This is slightly unfair only in the case of Foot, whose politics are an anachronism but who is a better man than the others.

Though the subject be serious, it is a pleasure to report that Benn's act suffered a setback this week. The Spectator reports on the latest Intelligence Squared debate, which presented three positions on the future of Iraq. Benn and the more talented figure of Rory Stewart presented the case that Allied forces should leave Iraq as soon as practicalities allow:

Tony Benn, favouring an immediate pull-out, affirmed his belief in the UN as the arbiter of international law. ‘Iraq is like Vietnam,’ he said, ‘an unwinnable war’. Displaying his preference for seductive imagery over convincing argument he added that ‘the Statue of Liberty has moved to Guantanamo Bay.’ His aside that ‘there’s no difference between a suicide bomber and a Stealth bomber’ got him into trouble later on.

Indeed it did. You can listen to the whole debate here. This, as reported by the Spectator correspondent, is what happens:

Gravel-voiced General Sir Michael Jackson condemned Tony Benn’s attempt to ‘equate suicide bombers with coalition aircrew.’ He found this ‘extraordinary and obscene. A calumny.’ Huge applause. Benn responded by recalling the early 1940s when he’d seen the nearby streets of Westminster strewn with civilians killed by the Luftwaffe. Was there any difference between the victims of state armies and those of individual terrorists? ‘War is the terrorism of the rich against the poor,’ said Benn. ‘Terrorism is the war of the poor against the rich.’ Many applauded. Many were unimpressed.

Benn has a stock of rhetorical observations that he uses repeatedly. I've come across the "stealth bomber" analogy before. Here, among many other examples, is Benn's immediate response to the 7/7 suicide attacks:

It’s not the terrorism just, it’s the violence, because terrorism and bombing are the same. The suicide bomber and the stealth bomber both kill innocent people for political purposes. And you have to turn your mind to how you deal with this.

It's striking too that, when invited to comment directly on the practice of suicide terrorism, Benn doesn't condemn it. I don't mean that he supports it; I'm certain he doesn't. I mean literally that he doesn't condemn it, but shifts the question to something else. When asked directly if there is a justification for suicide terrorism, Benn doesn't give an answer at all. Here's an exchange from a BBC online chat from 2002:

Questioner: Do you think that there is ever a justification for the suicide bombers in Palestine? How can the Palestinians best advance their cause?

Tony Benn: Israel is occupying land that does not belong to it, just as Saddam Hussein occupied Kuwait and was driven out. Israel has built huge cities for Israelis in Palestine, and will not let Palestinians go back to their homes in Israel. There can be no peace, no end to suicide bombings, and no end to Israeli air attacks, without a Palestinian state, and the withdrawal of all Israeli troops.

Now, I wish to see a Palestinian state, I acknowledge that states as well as groups can be guilty of terrorist acts, and I also myself accept the case in a supreme emergency for acts of war that would violate non-combatant immunity. (The argument from "supreme emergency" is Michael Walzer's; he maintains that, for example, area bombing of German cities by the Allies was justified in 1940 and 1941, but not later. See his essay "Emergency Ethics”, in Arguing About War, 2004, p. 46.) But British and American forces operating under a UN mandate in Iraq are not practising terrorism; they are fighting it. They are not targeting civilians; they are protecting civilians. To draw an analogy between those forces and suicide terrorists who specifically target non-combatants makes - I understate on a grand operatic scale - no sense, and the flip alliteration of Benn's remarks merely underlines his irresponsibility. As President Carter - in an uncharacteristically memorable phrase - said of the first President Bush, the man has a silliness problem. And there is little else to be said of Benn's public service and political campaigning over many decades.

Before the debate, I sent William Shawcross - who spoke in favour of the proposition that Allied forces should stay in Iraq till we have won - some information about Tony Benn, but in truth it was redundant. Benn was perfectly capable of discrediting himself without assistance. On the far more important matter of the arguments about policy for Iraq, I note only that William and his colleague argued convincingly and secured a huge shift of opinion to their side of the argument. You will gain much from listening to them.