When someone of Lord Bingham’s stature says the Iraq war was unlawful, it enhances the case for a full public inquiry into the lessons of the war, says The Guardian in an editorial yesterday. Excerpts:
More than five years after the event, how much does it matter that a retired law lord now believes the government’s legal advice on the invasion of Iraq was unlawful? From one perspective the answer is: Not very much. Seen from 2008, after all, the Iraq war is history. With the Iraqi government’s backing this week, the troops will soon be on the way out. Chastened by the whole experience, no Western leader is likely to go down the Bush-Blair route any time soon. Like it or not, the original advice was sincerely offered and sincerely acted on. And Lord Bingham is in any case no longer a lord of appeal. In short, his Grotius lecture this week may be a powerful piece of legal reasoning. But it is a footnote to a decision that cannot now be reversed. Some of this skepticism is well-founded. But not all of it.
In the first place, Lord Bingham is not just any old lawyer. He is the most senior judge of the modern era. He is regarded by many as its finest legal mind. Though Lord Bingham only retired a few weeks ago, he has been at the pinnacle of English law-making for a decade and a half and has clearly been pondering the war’s legality for years. It may raise some eyebrows that he should be so quick to engage on this supremely divisive issue so soon after leaving the bench — but if the issue is so important, why not? The simple fact is that, when Lord Bingham speaks on the law, it is always a good idea to listen.
Just because it is now more than five years since the attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, advised that an invasion would be lawful, it does not follow that his advice or the decision are less controversial or momentous now than they were in 2003. It is hard to think of a more serious decision than one to go to war. In a world increasingly and rightly regulated by international law, all nations need to be clear about the lawfulness of war and the obligation to obey that law.
