Historical insight

JOURNALISM, they say, is the first draft of history. But every now and then a newspaper has an opportunity to provide material that allows events to be seen from a new perspective, in more vivid detail, allowing the public to gain a far better understanding of important events in recent history. That is what Scotland on Sunday is able to do today, in publishing leaked US diplomatic cables about the British government’s withdrawal of armed forces from the war in Iraq.

These cables, selected and analysed by our journalists, provide a fascinating insight into the mindset of British ministers at the time, and reveal the deep concern with which the United States, the United Nations and the fledgling Iraqi government regarded the UK withdrawal.

Rarely do we have the opportunity to eavesdrop on a conversation over lunch between men such as General David Petraeus, the US military commander, and Des Browne, then UK defence secretary. The diplomatic, military and political nuances are fascinating – but inevitably it is the human detail that brings such encounters alive. It is there in Browne’s evident dismay at the “depressing and incomprehensible” situation in British-controlled Basra, and in Petraeus asking Browne why Britain was “beating itself up” over Iraq.

What one concludes from these revelations depends very much on one’s attitude to the war and to the political protagonists. But the judgment on Gordon Brown, as the prime minister who presided over the British withdrawal, is not necessarily an unkind one. First, it should be noted that the initial decision to drawdown British troops was taken by Brown’s predecessor, Tony Blair, who left office in June 2007. It was left to Brown to see this through, and the charge made by the US diplomats in London who reported back to Washington DC on this process was that his actions were politically motivated. Need we be unduly outraged at this? Political considerations often take us into war – it should be no surprise that they often extricate us from it as well. The concerns of Britain’s allies are clear from the cables, but should the prime minister put those imperatives above his first imperative, which is to act in the interests of the people of Britain?

There was no doubt – as the cables concede – that Brown’s actions in withdrawing our troops from Iraq would prove popular among a British public that had grown heart-sick of the war. This was a conflict, the public believed, that had been sold on a false prospectus, given the failure to find Saddam’s supposed arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. The British people wanted our troops out. Brown obliged. If, by doing so, he made himself more popular, then that is only a natural political consequence.

Where some questions may now need to be asked, however, is in the performance in Basra of the British military authorities and their diplomatic and international development partners in Whitehall. It is clear that Basra, at first the most peaceful area of post-invasion Iraq, turned into what US senator John McCain described as “Chicago in the Twenties”. And all on the British watch. The leaked US cables will provide valuable new evidence for analysts and historians to determine exactly what happened, and exactly what mistakes were made.

Scotland on Sunday obtained access to these cables through a relationship we and our sister paper The Scotsman established with WikiLeaks, the organisation whose motto is “We Open Governments”. The morality of such leaks has been well-discussed, and they must obviously be conducted with due care and a clear-eyed assessment as to the implications. But done responsibly, such operations provide a valuable – and honourable – function, allowing us a window on what our political masters do in our name.