Thank goodness for Robin Cook - we need him

Britain has a new leader of the Opposition. It is the former Foreign Secretary

The Iraq war has brought us to a turning point. The future will not be like the past. All that we can do, we who play no direct part in the conflict, is to try to estimate what the permanent results will be. What follows are hypotheses, the best I can make of the information at our disposal – in other words not yet predictions.

First, the United States has had ample revenge for 11 September. Until now, when told by Americans that we have failed to understand how deep were the grief and rage engendered the attack on the twin towers, we have nodded our heads and thought, yes, well, they do have a point. Not any longer. The death and destruction caused by the bombing of Baghdad are quite as terrible as anything suffered by New York.

The US has used up its moral capital. It has lost the sympathy vote. President Bush will go on mentioning 11 September in every speech. But the excuse is worn out. It might explain, but it doesn't justify. If you believe in an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth, then the account is in balance.

My second hypothesis is that the war in Iraq is going to be more like Vietnam than anything else. The question isn't whether the battle for Baghdad will bring to mind Stalingrad or Berlin during the Second World War or whether the tank battles resemble those fought by Eisenhower after D-Day or Montgomery's exploits in North Africa.

Instead read this account of the Vietnam War published in The New York Times over the weekend by a participant: "In the 5th Marine Regiment area of operations outside Da Nang, we routinely faced enemy soldiers dressed in civilian clothes and even as women. Their normal routes of ingress and egress were through villages, and we fought daily in populated areas.

"On one occasion a smiling, waving girl – no more than seven years old – lured a squad from my platoon into a vicious North Vietnamese crossfire. And if a Vietcong soldier surrendered, it was essential to remove his family members from their village by nightfall, or they might be killed for the sake of discipline."

This seems to me to be a plausible description of how the Iraq war is already developing. And the same correspondent pointed out that in Vietnam the US Marine Corps lost five times as many killed as in the First World War, three times as many as in the Korean war and more total casualties than in the whole of the Second World War.

Hypothesis number three is that the Anglo-American alliance will dissolve after the Iraq war is over. For us it has become a humiliating relationship. I don't believe any future prime minister will be able to persist with such a one-sided arrangement. We give, but we get nothing in return. We say that a second Security Council resolution is necessary; the Americans couldn't care less. There wasn't one. Mr Blair thought the weapons inspectors should have more time, if not as long as France proposed. There was no more time.

Britain has argued for a UN resolution to authorise the post-war administration and governance of Iraq. Mr Bush isn't interested. While Mr Blair got a commitment from the President that a so-called road map for resolving the Israel/Palestine conflict would be published, it hasn't appeared.

Even the administration of the Iraqi port of Umm Qasr fits into this pattern. We captured the town and stated that an Iraqi administration should be installed in order to show that Iraqi resources will be used for the benefit of the Iraqi people. But the US has already awarded the contract to an American company. Indeed all the initial contracts for reconstruction have gone to US interests, none to British.

Finally, who can forget Donald Rumsfeld's musings during a televised news conference that Britain's participation wasn't particularly important. If parliamentary approval wasn't forthcoming, then a "workaround" would solve the problem. Of course Britain and Mr Blair himself get warm approval ratings from the American public. As Time put it last week: "For a whole section of centrist and liberal opinion in America, Blair's endorsement of regime change in Baghdad helped solidify support for the war, especially among influential elites, as well as making Blair a hero in the American heartlands." Very useful for Mr Bush but nothing in it for us.

Hypothesis number four is that in terms of domestic politics, Britain has a new leader of the opposition. It is Mr Robin Cook. This former Foreign Secretary, honourable resigner from Mr Blair's Cabinet, brilliant parliamentary performer, hoisted his flag yesterday in the Sunday Mirror in an article in which he stated that he had already had his fill of "this bloody and unnecessary war". He wants our troops home "before more of them are killed".

Mr Cook has no competition for his new task. The Conservative Party has contrived to sideline itself. Its support for Mr Blair is admirable in its way. However, it leaves a vacuum. Mr Kennedy, leader of the Liberal Democrats, has consistently opposed the war. But he lacks the gravitas and the knowledge to carry conviction. Thank goodness for Mr Cook. We need a well-directed anti-war party. Mr Cook's eruption is the best news we have had since the first bombs landed in Baghdad.