Unfortunately, there really was no alternative to bombing Iraq

EVER SINCE Wednesday night when it began, I have been listening and watching, trying to work out what I think about the Anglo-American bombing of Iraq. Perhaps many readers have, too. Like me, they may find the easy certainty that lots of commentators wear smugly, like soft armour, is impossible for them to put on; that it irritates the intellect.

I do not like bombs and I distrust the insouciance of the military about the effects and accuracy of their fabulous weapons. The lies that were told about the American war in Vietnam, the false pretexts that were invented for escalating the conflict, the hidden bombing of neutral countries, the murderous euphemisms and the utter futility of the whole exercise have left a deep distrust of the Pentagon and all its works. In the 1991 Gulf war we heard a deal too much techno bombast about destroyed Scuds that weren't and smart bombs that turned out to be dumb.

But for every armchair military enthusiast, looking at the world through his or her telescopic cross-hairs, there seems - especially within the liberal establishment - to be a foreign affairs genius who, "nauseated" by the policy of the Government, is certain that the bombings were an attempt to save Clinton's flushed hide, with Tony Blair acting as the poodle of the Yanks.

These are the people who think that Wag the Dog, the film in which a US president declares a war so as to cover up an affair, is actually true. They probably also believe, pace The Truman Show, that their own lives are being secretly filmed as part of a TV soap opera. They tend to regret the tardiness of firm "action" in Rwanda, Bosnia, Kosovo and anywhere else that pricks the conscience, but are heartily opposed to the action that is being taken in the Gulf.

The best reason, of course, for not seeking to enforce UN resolutions on Iraq would be because Iraq was simply not the threat we have made it out to be. As far as I know there is only one British politician who openly argues this, though others surely believe it (I would, for instance, like to hear George Galloway on the subject). Tam Dalyell, that plucky, obsessive MP, recently met Tariq Aziz and left convinced by the urbane Iraqi's assurances that his country barely had two toxins to rub together. It had all gone, honest. On balance, said Mr Dalyell, he would rather believe Mr Aziz than UN inspectors.

This is both a brave stance and an incredibly stupid one. Mr Aziz was at Saddam Hussein's side when Iran was invaded in 1980, when Kuwait was overrun in 1990, when the Kurds of Halabja were gassed, when every opposition Tom, Dick and Ali was being shot, hanged or poisoned. It all never happened, according to Mr Aziz, whose role has been to persuade the gullible outsider that the Iraqi regime is misunderstood. He is the Ribbentrop of the Euphrates, a smooth liar in a monstrous cause.

Let us presume then, even if Tam will not, that Saddam continues to be a threat because of two proven factors: his extreme bellicosity and his willingness to use any weapons that he can make or buy, no matter how nasty they are. What should we do about him? On Thursday that question was put to a furious Tony Benn. The (unedited) exchange went like this, according to Hansard:

Mr Christopher Leslie (Shipley): What credible alternative strategy does my Rt Hon Friend offer for disarming Saddam Hussein?

Mr Benn: I ask my Hon Friend to consider this: if one does something illegal, it is no good saying: "Well, what else could I do?" It is an illegal action. The answer is simple: the sanctions should be lifted. I am asked to believe the Prime Minister, but the imposition of sanctions has not stopped Saddam re-arming.

Mr Dale Campbell-Savours (Workington): How will that stop Saddam?

Mr Benn: Sanctions have not had any effect except on the Iraqi people. [Interruption] Please do not shout at me, I am entitled to make my case. I have listened to my Hon Friend the member for Workington and I shall be sorry when he leaves the House. The world community agrees unanimously that the sanctions are a grave injustice that affect innocent people.

AND THAT was it. He then got back down to telling everyone what shits they were. It was a telling moment because it revealed that Mr Benn had absolutely no idea what to do about Iraq. Those, by and large, who have criticised the bombing so trenchantly in print and on air have no notion either. And, unlike in 1990, they are now also opposed to sanctions, which they (rightly) see as having affected Iraqi civilians in an appalling way.

On Sunday, President Chirac of France also called for the sanctions to be relaxed on humanitarian grounds. The French rationale seems to be that sanctions are bolstering, rather than undermining, the Iraqi government. The hope is that a relaxation will allow the fermentation of opposition to the dictator and facilitate his removal.

Like most other people, I feel some natural sympathy with this view. I do not care to be the agent of death among the medicine-deprived tots of Basra, and am wondering whether Saddam will ever be brought down by the current Western strategy. But those who blithely advocate the lifting of many sanctions should also confront the dangers. While we wait for the Iraqi elite to get on with it and machine-gun Saddam in some dusty Baghdad courtyard, he will still be there, and with more money to spend. So far, for all its faults, the post-Gulf-war settlement has prevented the most aggressive tyrant in the Middle East from making war.

The corollary, then, to the relaxation of sanctions, must be an increased "rather than a diminished" willingness to use force should the Iraqis begin a weapons build-up. In other words, we would be more "not less" likely to have to send in the planes at the first signs of enhanced weapons production. That could be why, right now, we're sending more planes and ships there. And we'll also want (I presume) to increase our use of covert operations to support the Iraqi opposition, though which of the 57 varieties we will back is a rather fraught question.

There are two alternatives to this new low-sanction, high-military, encourage- the-opposition strategy. The first is the one that some Tories appear to be canvassing, and that is a land-based invasion of Iraq, the removal of Saddam and (in some of the more ingenious variations) the division of the country into three separate states. This, as even Michael Howard knows - his impatient bluster about a "get-rid-of-Saddam" objective notwithstanding - could be a complete diplomatic disaster.

The second is that we do nothing. We sit and we watch until the enlightened French have rearmed Iraq and until the almost uniquely dangerous Saddam (or successors) do it to us again. I just don't think that that's a good idea.