The launch of The Henry Jackson Society

An alliance by the pro-war left and internationalist conservatives has been consummated with the launch of The Henry Jackson Society.

Interventionist Tory Michael Gove who argued on the Panorama Iraq special a couple of weeks ago (against Simon Jenkins), has joined the likes of Oliver Kamm, a blogger turned Times columnist and darling of the pro-War left.

Former Number 10 adviser and Guardian columnist David Clark skilfully compared the society to the neoconservative movement founded by pro-interventionist liberals 30 years ago in the United States.

I find myself agreeing with many of the societies founding principles however I am unable to reconcile the current Iraq mess with their ideology:

2. Supports a ‘forward strategy’ to assist those countries that are not yet liberal and democratic to become so. This would involve the full spectrum of our ‘carrot’ capacities, be they diplomatic, economic, cultural or political, but also, when necessary, those ‘sticks’ of the military domain.

I followed closely the pre-war columns of Tom Freidman in the New York Times, he warned of the possibility of civil war prior to the invasion and argued passionately that removing Saddam hastily was a mistake. Friedman rightly has become a pragmatic critic rather than an “I told you so” detractor.

We should be prepared to intervene militarily where humanitarian abuses are occurring, and we should use our influence to bring freedom and democracy to those under authoritarian yoke. But our intervention should be measured, multilateral, and morally virtuous; let’s not let this worthy premise poison the reality of the Whitehouse’s pre-war misrepresentation of pre-war intelligence.

If invading Iraq was the right thing to do, there should have been no reason to distort the facts. Saddam Hussein we know was contained (as Hans Blix argued, after all he would know), and we should have engaged with the regime to bring peace and democracy to a post-Saddam Iraq. Imperialism on selfish grounds always creates more problems that it resolves, and we will be dealing with the fall out from our Iraq folly for decades to come.

So I welcome the emergence of this internationalist society which looks to face up to the difficult realities of a post-Cold War era, but I refuse to revise my revulsion at our disastrous and damaging Baghdad adventure.