A SECOND CHANCE AT STALINISM:

Blair: My Christian conscience is clear over war: Exclusive: The Prime Minister answers questions from 'Independent on Sunday' readers over his beliefs and motives (Andy McSmith and Steve Richards, 02 March 2003, Independent)

Tony Blair has told critics that his Christian conscience is clear about the terrible death toll which could follow a military strike against Iraq.

In a unique dialogue with Independent on Sunday readers, the Prime Minister declared: "I would never go into war if I thought it was morally wrong." Mr Blair has responded in detail to the many concerns raised by our readers over the past weeks.
His answers were composed at 30,000 feet as he flew back from talks with the Spanish Prime Minister, José Maria Aznar [...]

We might not like Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq but we have been neither threatened nor attacked by it. We have no treaty obligations with any of Iraq's neighbours (none of whom have been attacked either), nor any legal obligations to the people of Iraq. No link between Iraq and al-Qa'ida has been discovered. So why are you intent on forcing the UK to take part in and pay for an act of aggression against Iraq that has no legality, and that the majority of your fellow citizens do not want?

Ann Keith, 62, Grantchester, Cambridgeshire

The simple answer is because we are a member of the UN Security Council which voted in November by 15-0 to warn Saddam that he had a final opportunity to comply fully with his disarmament obligations or face serious consequences. If the UN is to have any authority – and I believe this is vital in the modern world – then we must act if necessary.

But I also don't think in the modern world it is any longer realistic to think you can just pretend things are happening elsewhere and it is not going to affect you. Surely this was the lesson we all learnt from 11 September. The international community, for good reasons as well as bad, turned a blind eye to Afghanistan and the links between al-Qa'ida and the Taliban. I can imagine what the reaction would have been if I had said before 11 September that the international community must act militarily against al-Qa'ida in Afghanistan. But with hindsight, we know that would have been the right thing to do.

Ann Keith is the assistant librarian at Christ's College in Cambridge. She lives with her two cats in nearby Grantchester, and has one daughter and two grandchildren.

"When I was considering my question, I thought back to my youth. If we'd launched attacks like this in those days, we'd have gone to war with Stalin. We knew he was imprisoning and torturing hundreds of thousands of people, but we didn't behave like this. For whatever reason, George Bush is trying to finish what his father started, and Tony Blair has been caught up in his coat tails. At base, there is no legality for their actions, either morally or diplomatically."

Ms Keith is precisely right and utterly wrong. We should indeed have gone to war with Stalin and because we didn't tens of millions of people died to no good purpose. Rare are the times when the complacencty of democracy can be intrerrupted long enough to tackle muderous tyranny, let's not squander this one. Posted by Orrin Judd at March 1, 2003 10:08 PM