Perhaps the biggest mistake we in the West made as the day of the invasion of Iraq drew near was to believe that others think in the same way as we do. This is an error that we frequently make. We fail to understand that others are not of our Western mindset, and that they will read and interpret the facts differently.
I was the deputy to the American general who directed the Iraq Survey Group. I was therefore the senior Briton involved in the search on the ground in 2003 for the truth about Iraqi WMD. Over one thousand strong, and comprising scientists, intelligence officers, soldiers, specialists in chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, former UNSCOM inspectors, analysts of every sort – mostly but not exclusively American – the ISG was an extraordinary collection of men and women. It represented top expertise in every relevant field. I helped my boss to establish and run the ISG. When he was away I took charge. Doctor David Kay, a former IAEA inspector in Iraq and thereafter a senior officer with the CIA, gave direction on what we should look for. We made it happen.
Over the first few months of the ISG’s existence, we examined millions of pages of documents, interviewed thousands of Iraqis and visited hundreds of sites in the search for the elusive – or, as we concluded ultimately – the non-existent weapons. We found evidence of illegal programmes – clandestine laboratories and the like – but no ready-to-go weapons. The intelligence was simply wrong. A number of those generals and scientists whom we interviewed told us that they really had destroyed the WMD after the first Gulf war. We asked them why they hadn’t made that clear. They said that the regime had to deter the possibility of attacks by Iran and Israel. We then asked them: “Surely you realized that, come early 2003, you faced a rather more immediate threat?” They answered that Saddam had told them that France and Russia had promised that they would not let the war happen. Given the clear Iraqi belief that there would not be a war, no amount of sabre-rattling by the West was going to persuade Saddam to throw open Iraq’s doors to the weapons inspectors.
As Chilcot will doubtless reveal later today, there were of course other ways in which we failed to understand the consequences of our statements and actions. Many of those scientists we in the ISG interviewed – engaging, educated, fluent English-speaking and a number of them Christian – told us that they wanted to help rebuild their country. But a US edict prevented them, as Ba’ath party members, from being allowed to work in Iraq again. They would therefore have to take their talents elsewhere. The chances were that another state might employ them for malign purposes. I tried but could not persuade senior Americans to revisit this edict. Deba’athification was unwise, as was the US decision to disband the Iraqi army and stop its pay – a decision later reversed. No doubt some of the dreadful problems facing Iraq today can be traced back to these decisions.
Our forefathers understood these places and the mentalities of those who lived there much better, by and large, than we do. In Yemen, their defence minister once told me: “If you want to understand our tribes, read your books – you know more about our tribes than we do.” We can’t turn the clock back to a time when our forefathers spent half their lifetimes in such places, speaking all the local languages and dialects, trusted by the tribes to adjudicate on their quarrels and comprehending the dynamics. But, in considering whether and how we involve ourselves in others’ countries, it would at least be useful to recognize that our insights into local thinking may be limited.