Mr Speaker, I have never put the justification for action as regime change. We have to act within the terms set out in resolution 1441—that is our legal base. But it is the reason why I say frankly that if we do act, we should do so with a clear conscience and a strong heart. I accept fully that those who are opposed to this course of action share my detestation of Saddam. Who could not? Iraq is a potentially wealthy country that in 1979, the year before Saddam came to power, was richer than Portugal or Malaysia. Today it is impoverished: 60 per cent. of its population dependent on food aid. Thousands of children die needlessly every year from lack of food and medicine. Four million people out of a population of just over 20 million living in exile.
The brutality of the repression—the death and torture camps, the barbaric prisons for political opponents, the routine beatings for anyone or their families suspected of disloyalty—all of that is well documented. Just last week, someone slandering Saddam was tied to a post in a street in Baghdad, their tongue cut out, mutilated and left to bleed to death as a warning to others. I recall a few weeks ago talking to an Iraqi exile and saying to her that I understood how grim it must be under the lash of Saddam. "But you don't", she replied. "You cannot. You do not know what it is like to live in perpetual fear." And she is right. We take our freedom for granted. But imagine not to be able to speak or discuss or debate or even question the society you live in. To see friends and family taken away and never daring to complain. To suffer the humility of failing courage in the face of pitiless terror. That is how the Iraqi people live. Leave Saddam in place, and the blunt truth is that that is how they will continue to be forced to live.
We must face the consequences of the actions that we advocate. For those of us who support the course that I am advocating, that means all the dangers of war. But for others opposed to this course, it means—let us be clear—that for the Iraqi people, whose only true hope lies in the removal of Saddam, for them, the darkness will simply close back over. They will be left under his rule, without any possibility of liberation—not from us, not from anyone.
Will the Prime Minister give way?
Just a moment.
And if this House now demands, this is the choice before us. If this House now demands that at this moment, faced with this threat from this regime, British troops are pulled back, that we turn away at the point of reckoning—and this is what it means—what then? What will Saddam feel? Strengthened beyond measure. What will the other states who tyrannise their people, the terrorists who threaten our existence—what will they] take from that? That the will confronting them is decaying and feeble. Who will celebrate and who will weep if we take our troops back from the Gulf now?
Will the Prime Minister give way?
And if our plea is for America to work with others, to be good as well as powerful allies, will our retreat—sorry. Sorry. If our plea is for America to work with others, to be good as well as powerful allies, will our retreat make them multilateralist, or will it rather not be the biggest impulse to unilateralism that we could possibly imagine? And what of the United Nations then, and of the future of Iraq and the middle east peace process, devoid of our influence and stripped of our insistence?
The House wanted this discussion before conflict. That was a legitimate demand. It has it, and these are the choices. And in this dilemma, no choice is perfect, no choice is ideal, but on this decision hangs the fate of many things: of whether we summon the strength to recognise the global challenge of the 21st century, and meet it; of the Iraqi people, groaning under years of dictatorship; of our armed forces, brave men and women of whom we can feel proud, and whose morale is high and whose purpose is clear; of the institutions and alliances that will shape our world for years to come. To retreat now, I believe, would put at hazard all that we hold dearest. Turn the United Nations back into a talking shop; stifle the first steps of progress in the middle east; leave the Iraqi people to the mercy of events on which we would have relinquished all power to influence for the better; tell our allies that at the very moment of action, at the very moment when they need our determination, Britain faltered: I will not be party to such a course.
This is not the time to falter. This is the time for this House not just for this Government—or, indeed, for this Prime Minister—but for this House to give a lead: to show that we will stand up for what we know to be right; to show that we will confront the tyrannies and dictatorships and terrorists who put our way of life at risk; to show, at the moment of decision, that we have the courage to do the right thing.
