Posted on 05/04/2005 7:35:23 PM PDT by neverdem
LONDON, May 3 - Election campaigns claim unforeseen casualties, and in Britain's case one may be the ability of British leaders to order troops to war at America's side in quite the same way the United States has come to expect.
The campaign for the election here on Thursday has brought a series of damaging disclosures about Prime Minister Tony Blair's actions in the prelude to the invasion of Iraq, provoking forecasts that future prime ministers will face greater constraints in sending troops to war.
"Politicians have to understand the degree of responsibility they hold in an era when they are committing troops to war more frequently," Col. Christopher Langton, a military analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies here, said in an interview. "In the future there'll be more reticence about committing troops unless there's a direct threat to the national interest."
Even on Tuesday, with just two days left in the campaign, the Iraq war continued to cast a long shadow after the death on Monday night of Sgt. Anthony Wakefield, a 24-year-old soldier who became the 87th Briton to die in the war.
"What was the point of sending them all over there?" Sergeant Wakefield's estranged wife, Ann Toward, said through tears on Tuesday. "It's Tony Blair's fault. He sent all those troops out. If he hadn't sent them out, Anthony would still be here today."
Underscoring the emotional cost and pressures of the war, the families of 10 other British soldiers who died in Iraq lodged a petition at 10 Downing Street demanding an inquiry into the legality of the war and threatening legal action against Mr. Blair.
"Some of the families are seriously concerned that their children died in circumstances where the war was illegal," they said in a joint statement.
According to Britain's unwritten constitution, prime ministers have the right to deploy troops on their own say-so, and in the postwar era they have generally valued what they view as a special relationship with the United States.
That endured through the Persian Gulf war of 1991 and previously in the ties between Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan in the 1980's. Mr. Blair deftly steered his close relationship with the White House through Democratic and Republican administrations from President Bill Clinton to the current President Bush.
But then came Iraq. At the heart of the current debate has been the accusation that as preparations for the war unfolded, Mr. Blair withheld vital legal advice and other information from the rest of the government and Parliament itself - allegations that seem to have been substantiated by a slew of newspaper disclosures.
"This week's revelations have left grave questions that Parliament must pursue determinedly after polling day," said Robin Cook, a former foreign minister and stalwart of Mr. Blair's Labor Party who resigned from the government in March 2003 to protest the war. "They also demand changes to the way Britain is governed so that the cabinet is never again asked to take a major, strategic decision while crucial advice is withheld from it."
The disclosures began last week when the government was forced to publicize the legal arguments for Britain's involvement in the war. Kept secret for more than two years, a 13-page document dated March 7, 2003, set out arguments by Lord Goldsmith, the attorney general, for and against the legality of the war.
That document was shown only to Mr. Blair's inner circle, and its ambiguities contrasted sharply with the unequivocal advice that Lord Goldsmith gave to Parliament 10 days later in support of intervention.
Then, on Sunday, leaked documents - not denied by Mr. Blair - showed that the prime minister gave President Bush a secret commitment to join the war in April 2002, long before he sought the views, or approval, of the British Parliament or government. Mr. Blair was depicted in the documents as supporting so-called regime change, which Lord Goldsmith specifically ruled out as a legal cause for war.
The unease, moreover, spread to the highest ranks of the military.
Adm. Sir Michael Boyce, Britain's senior commander at the start of the war, voiced concerns in a newspaper interview that he might have faced prosecution at the International Criminal Court for joining the invasion.
Parliament did vote on the war on March 18, 2003 - on the eve of the invasion, with British troops already deployed on Iraq's borders - but legislators say they were not aware then of Lord Goldsmith's earlier concerns about the war's legality.
"Now that there has been a vote on these issues, and in such controversial circumstances, I think it is unlikely that except in the most exceptional circumstances a government would choose not to have a vote in Parliament," Gordon Brown, Mr. Blair's finance chief and heir apparent, said last week.
The developments add up to a remarkable agglomeration of political and psychological restraints, markedly different from the atmosphere in which a supremely self-confident Mr. Blair dispatched soldiers to Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan and, of course, Iraq.
"The Brits have laid down their lives in a lot of places, but I never heard the families complain before," Frederick Forsyth, a best-selling author and supporter of the opposition Conservatives, said in an interview. In the past, bereaved military families "accepted that their loved ones had died doing their job on an honest prospectus," Mr. Forsyth said. "This time they knew they were sent on a false prospectus."
In the election campaign, the unpopularity of the war and the wide mistrust that Mr. Blair garnered from the way he handled it have played to the strengths of the only party to oppose the war, the Liberal Democrats, who are now seeking a quick British withdrawal.
The furor over Iraq here - where the war was far more unpopular than in the United States and where Mr. Blair, unlike Mr. Bush, has been unable to erase an abiding political stain - has repercussions for the United States.
"Britain will remain very much in support of the United States, but I think in the future there will be more reticence on both sides," Colonel Langton said. "The Americans now understand the difficulties they put the British prime minister in."
So the NYT wishes. So do our enemies.
Not one mention of the people who've been liberated and freed from the oppression of a tyrannical dictator.
Shame on every one of these selfish people quoted. And shame on the NY Slimes.
It's the truth.
The 'special relationship' has been very badly damaged by the intense unpopularity of this war in England. Blair put his head on a chopping block as did Aznar.
The hard truth is that any future "coalition of the willing" is going to demand UN resolutions up the wazoo first to cover themselves.
I'm in the minority who thinks America will have to team up with other allies to save the world.
I won't be surprised if Blair loses because of Iraq. The left in Europe only likes the U.S. when a Clinton or Carter is in the White House. American Capitalist Imperialism must be opposed by them. I think most of the governments in Western Europe are controlled by the left, IIRC.
Exactly right, if we had launched the Iraq war with Gore in power imo there would be no widespread protests in Europe.
Remember Kosovo, those same 'anti-war' Europeans were screaming for Serbian blood, and cheering Clinton on.
Bump
We'll hear a lot less of this garbage once Blair is re-elected for a historic third term with another thumping majority.
My vote cast already.
OK, so from now on terrorists will have to murder thousands in Britain before they can muster the will to fight.
Oh well.
Thanks for hanging tough with Mr. Blair.
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