FIRING LINE

Correspondence

Judy Betts

James Brown’s Firing Line was well timed: it was released as the Chilcot Inquiry report was handed down in the United Kingdom. In a sad reminder of how devastating the invasion of Iraq has been, the release of the report coincided with the deadliest attack in Iraq since the 2003 invasion. Brown’s essay is in part a personal account of wartime experiences in both Iraq and Afghanistan, which puts a human face on the consequences of decisions made by people far removed from the dust and danger of war. 

Brown makes a number of suggestions for improving the decision-making process for going to war, a process that is currently flawed by the domination of one person (the prime minister). With the benefit of hindsight, and lessons learnt from the Chilcot Inquiry, would Brown’s measures have saved Australia from its decision to join the Coalition of the Willing in what has variously been described as “the worst foreign policy disaster in US history” and “the worst British foreign policy blunder since the Suez”?

First, would a national security council have made a difference? As John Howard himself has pointed out, it is not intelligence agencies that make decisions about going to war. Going to war is a policy decision and such decisions are made on the basis of policy advice, not intelligence advice. Intelligence advice is just one input to considerations which need to be more strategic and holistic. 

There is little on the public record about the nature and content of the policy advice provided to government about sending Australian troops to Iraq. Such advice was excluded from the terms of reference of the 2003 Inquiry into Intelligence on Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction by a parliamentary joint committee (Jull Inquiry) and the 2004 Inquiry into Australian Intelligence Agencies by Philip Flood.

However, Paul Kelly, on page 260 of The March of Patriots, paints a picture of a public service far removed from the “mythical age of ‘frank and fearless’ advice much romanticised by the media.”

None of the three critical policy departments – Prime Minister and Cabinet, Foreign Affairs and Trade, and Defence – offered advice which questioned the wisdom of going to war. This was confirmed in interviews with a number of senior public servants. Apart from the final submission when cabinet decided to go to war, on 17 March 2003, there was no formal advice from the bureaucracy which examined the merits of such an action. Submissions to the National Security Committee of Cabinet addressed issues of military capability and logistics: implementation, rather than any consideration of the decision itself.

For a national security council to be effective, the government of the day would need to be willing to listen to advice and the staff of the organisation would have to be willing to be “apolitical” and provide “the Government with advice that is frank, honest, timely and based on the best available evidence” in accordance with Australian Public Service values.

Would increased parliamentary oversight, as Brown recommends, have improved accountability? In the case of the Iraq war, the Jull committee’s findings were potentially quite damaging, but clever media management by the Howard government (including the selective leaking of parts of the report) dissipated the public and political will to take matters further. The Jull Inquiry found that: 

The case made by the government was that Iraq possessed WMD in large quantities and posed a grave and unacceptable threat to the region and the world, particularly as there was a danger that Iraq’s WMD might be passed to terrorist organisations … This is not the picture that emerges from an examination of all the assessments provided to the Committee by Australia’s two analytical agencies … The statements by the Prime Minister and Ministers are more strongly worded than most of the AIC [Australian Intelligence Community] judgements. 

A leak to the media, two weeks before the report’s official release, primed journalists to see the key issue as politicisation of advice from the Office of National Assessments. As a result, many journalists missed the significance of the most critical finding in the report: namely that, on the basis of the advice of Australia’s own intelligence agencies, there was no compelling case for war.

There are many parallels with the Chilcot findings. The UK (read “Australia”) chose to join the invasion of Iraq before the peaceful options for disarmament had been exhausted. Military action was not a last resort. The judgments (read “statements by Prime Minister Howard and Minister for Foreign Affairs Alexander Downer”) about the severity of the threat posed by Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction were presented with a certainty that was not justified. Despite explicit warnings (read “from Mick Keelty, head of the Australian Federal Police”), the consequences of the invasion were underestimated. 

Finally, James Brown argues that there is a compelling case for parliament to be given the power to review “within a period of, say, ninety days” whether a military response is “in the strategic national interest.” Would this – or any other parliamentary requirement – have made a difference in the case of going to war in Iraq in 2003? 

In the three countries that formed the Coalition of the Willing – the US, UK and Australia – there were parliamentary/congressional debates over going to war. In Australia, the parliamentary debate was held on 20 March 2003, after the prime minister and his cabinet had formally decided, on 17 March, to join the Coalition. In the UK, while the executive has the power to declare war without going to parliament, Blair sought parliamentary approval because he did not have the endorsement of cabinet or the support of his party. Chilcot found that almost all of the substantive war-related decisions had been made without reference to the full cabinet. In the United States it is a constitutional requirement that Congress approve any decision to go to war. Military action was authorised in October 2002, on the (flawed) advice that Saddam Hussein continued to possess and develop a significant chemical and biological weapons capability and was actively seeking a nuclear weapons capability. 

It would seem that a parliamentary vote or power of veto, especially where the prime minister’s party has the numbers in the House, would not have prevented Australia’s participation in the disastrous Iraq venture.

Brown’s essay is a valuable piece which offers a unique perspective. His proposals have merit and are worth exploring, but of themselves would not necessarily have prevented a determined and skilled political leader from getting his way, as Howard did on Iraq. 

There are checks on power. Nothing substitutes for public servants who give frank and fearless advice; media outlets with the time and tenacity to do detailed investigative journalism; principled Opposition politicians with the energy and determination to keep governments accountable; a vigilant public; and whistleblowers with the courage to speak out. Given that Australia’s next military involvement is likely to require a more nuanced approach to the US alliance, it is terrifying to contemplate that we may not have learnt from our mistakes.

Judy Betts

Judy Betts has recently completed a PhD on the Australian media and the Iraq war.