BRAVE NEW WORLD

As we watched the shooting, then the looting and realised this was only the end of the beginning in Baghdad, someone asked me why I had been so unwavering in my support for military action against Saddam.

A dozen years ago a very frightened man crept into my office in Brown Street with a true story so horrifying it changed my entire perception of what Britain stands for in the world and how we should act in future.

This very brave, good man was an early asylum seeker from Iraq. Since then, four million Iraqis have fled into exile. His account of the evil brutality of Saddam's regime and what it had done to his family ensured my support for his case. He is now a proud and active British citizen and he is a very great credit to his own family and to the people of Iraq.

Porton Down has never been more important to our nation's defence. They know that it is not just the possession of weapons of mass destruction that poses a danger. It is about motive, intention and delivery, too. Saddam was and is guilty on all counts. I was in no doubt he and his regime posed a serious threat to the security of our homeland. Many international terrorist groups continue to do so.

Once, I flew in an RAF tanker over the no-fly zone in Northern Iraq. With us were four Tornados on life-saving patrols over Kurdish villages. One aircraft had a missile fired at it by Iraqi forces. This was not war as TV entertainment. I had seen at first hand the reality of that regime.

I met some of the families of the thousands of Kuwaitis who had 'disappeared' during Saddam's murderous occupation of that country. I went to the border with Iraq and looked up the waterway to Umm Quasr. We drove along the grim electric border fence the Kuwaitis had constructed and saw on the other side the pathetic Iraqi soldiers and the poverty-stricken civilians neglected by their government. Was this a proud, successful nation, living peacefully within its borders?

With the Commons Defence Committee I visited all the countries on the northern shore of the Mediterranean to ask their politicians, military and academics how they perceived the threat from the Middle East and North Africa. The message was clear. From the Caucasus to the Atlantic a great crescent of instability marked poverty, religious fundamentalism, dictatorship and conflict, driving economic migration and the threat of terrorism. We decided we should stop worrying about tanks rolling in from Russia and start thinking about why much of the world which is so poor (and which happens to be Muslim) is so envious of our prosperity and dominance that they will seek to migrate in their millions and succour evil men who will think - and do - the unthinkable. The twin towers fell on 9/11 and their destruction changed the world.

The dangers posed by Syria and Iran are not just military ones. They and other regimes have the motives and the means to use terror tactics and to wage economic and electronic war on us, too. Those threats will not diminish until we resolve the future of Israel and Palestine.

It is in the nature of the British to use military might when our Government believes diplomacy has failed and it is the right thing to do. Should we not have gone to war with Hitler, who had not bombed or invaded us? For thirty years in the nineteenth century a principle task of the Royal Navy was to inflict unprovoked attacks on shipping and foreign sovereign territory if they suspected involvement in the Slave Trade. Was that wrong? In both cases, Parliament trusted the Government to act in the national interest - just as we have done over Iraq.

The nature of war and terrorism has changed. We must continue to combat evil. But we must also have a clear vision of the world we want to live in - more justice, less conflict, more prosperity and new opportunities for children, women and men alike. The world is too small for anything else. Sometimes we will act with the UN, sometimes with Europe, sometimes with the USA and sometimes alone. But act we will.

Robert Key MP
13 April 2003