Oh dear. Silly Nick. The 30 women thing is neither here nor there to me (apart from that I’m mildly disturbed that there’s been such a hoohah about it when it doesn’t matter in the slightest) but that? That is AWFUL.

Depends whether you accept the current framing of international law (with its emphasis on state sovereignty) is itself legitimate. Perhaps it is better to talk about right or wrong rather than legal/illegal under the present circumstances.

Oh, that’s poor. Really piss poor.

If someone invades you, bombing them back *could* be justified if it dismantles their ability to attack you again.

What Clegg should have said was “we didn’t invade to destroy, we wanted to save them from Saddam” or something equally fatuous that didn’t mention oil, and then he could imply that not every invasion deserves retaliation.

But you have to show any competence or care in carrying out this ‘salvation invasion’ at all, and then try not to kill civilians or set up a civil war that everyone could see was inevitable. When you do ignorant, incompetent illegal things like that for oil and permanent military bases, you tend to lose the moral high ground. If Cheney hadn’t thrown out the 1000-page report by experts which said “Dear God no, don’t go near it, it’ll be a quagmire” in favour of his own 101-page “it’s be quick and cheap and we can keep the oil”, then Clegg could try that line of reasoning. But he can’t.

Some-one’s been watching the power of nightmares.

Actually, I haven’t seen it! But I may have read some Greg Palast *cough*

Oh god that gave me a headache! What on earth is he on?!

What is the problem here? I don’t see why Clegg has any duty to stick up for the invasion of Iraq, which is what PM was trying to trap him into doing.

I don’t think that’s the issue. He said that revenge invasions are justified, which is a brave statement.

He then said that for complicated moral reasons this shouldn’t apply Britain’s part in the Iraq war, since that invasion was special and complicated (which is a *stupid* statement).

He could have maintained that the war was illegal without claiming either of these.

Where did he say that revenge invasions are justified?

“Not if we honestly admitted we made a mistake over WMD intelligence and that it was important to now ensure Iraq was a functioning and stable democracy, and we repair the damage we caused by bombing the hell out of that place.”

I would agree depending on what your definition of the mistake is. For any apology not to appear to be a slap in the face it would have to contain an admission of either subterfuge of massive incompetence on the part of our government and or intelligence service, which has so far resulted in no one being held accountable. In other words we currently can give no assurance that this sort of thing won’t happen again.

Also any claim that the war was based on a mistake involving WMDs is undermined by our leaders current insistence that it was entirely justified based on regime change grounds.

Joe:
He first said clearly no, then let PM sucker him into it:

“PM: If Iraq had invaded Britain illegally, you would have said it was morally justified for us to attack them back, wouldn’t you?
NC: Yes, I probably would.”

*Morally* justified. Not for protection, or to achieve a goal – to gain a moral balance, it would be just or fair to attack back. Someone has wronged you, etc. It’s the old revenge/justice balance.

His problem was not distancing himself from PM’s first remark, which was “would it be justified for Iraqis to *exact revenge* on Britain?”. The violence he then agrees to, eg:

“PM: If Iran illegally bombs London next month, should we retaliate?
NC: Of course we should.”

Can now be seen as pertaining to the revenge question. Every instance PM is talking about is about revenge, and Clegg allows his yes answers to be taken in that context.

My reading of it, anyway.

Steve B, I don’t see “morally justified” as meaning “to gain a moral balance”. That definition almost demands retribution as the right thing to do.

“If Iraq had invaded Britain illegally” is a hypothetical with no detail. Is this a well-intentioned invasion by a hypothetical democratic Iraq to topple a hypothetical British dictator? We – some of us – might cheer such an invasion in the streets. But politically you cannot equivocate or ask for a details with a question like this, you will be crucified. All the headlines will say “Clegg calls for Iraq to invade Britain” with perhaps a caveat in the subtext that nobody will read.

PM knows this and he is just trying to cause trouble. Which is fair enough of course. His line seems to be that you shouldn’t say the war is illegal because it invites these questions. I take the view that we should say the war is illegal because it is illegal, and PM is just trying to dissuade people from telling the truth.

Anyway, if you want to read in retaliation in Clegg’s answer, I can’t stop you. I read it as implying self-defence. I guess we all read these things according to how sympathetic we are to the speaker. But surely self-defence is the context because PM goes on to suggest that Iraqi self-defence is legitimate. (I would take the view that if it were self-defence it wouldn’t involve killing quite so many other Iraqis, but that is off the point. If this hypothetical Iraqi force occupying Britain was willing to leave as soon as we stopped killing each other, I would question the morality of fighting it.)

You know, re-reading it, I think I was taking Clegg’s answers to mean a retaliatory *invasion* of the other country. This is what the Iran question means – attacking their homeland in ‘revenge’ for being bombed. People on their own soil attacking an invader is a completely separate question, and maybe that didn’t come out clearly enough.

I appreciate that Clegg never meant any of the answers to sanction revenge, but he does such a poor job of saying it (and an even worse job of not putting forward any positive response of his own) that PM gets to dictate the meaning of the whole dialogue for me.

Nick Clegg, as Sunny says, is actually correct to acknowledge the immorality of the situation. He realises that politically that position would not work for a leader of a mainstream political party.

What he should have said is that having been dragged into a war the British public did not want, it is for the UK and its allies to establish the means for paying reparations for each and every death. He should then say, this would be a burden for our country for a long time to come but it is nothing compared to what we have done to the people of Iraq. This will forever be a reminder to ourselves that there is a price to be paid for wars of aggression.

Such a stance would allow the whole region to come together to help the UK put things right.

Sunny, you are completely wrong, your stance justifies Petraeous and McCain who happily would stay a hundred years putting right the wrong.

Sunny

Whoops!

Surely what Nick Clegg is saying is wrong? If you invade a country illegally, and mess it up, then surely they have the right to fight back?

If you take the theoretical case of Iraq invading the UK, then an attack on Saddam City, by us, would be seen as a fight back, would it not?

We are into relative rights here, I think.

douglas, “they have a right to” is not the same as “it is right (morally justified) for them to”.

I might have a right to evict a pensioner who is three days behind on her rent, but it probably wouldn’t be the morally right thing to do.

In a state of conflict, debating the legal rights of fighting back is angels on the head of a pin stuff. There isn’t a rule of law in force to refer to. There may be a moral right – still not the same as a moral duty – to fight back, but do you really expect an interview like this to go this deep into moral philosophy?

…

Sure, there are lots of things that could and should have been said. I’m not so clear whether it is worth trying to dictate the agenda in a print interview.

I don’t think we should take as serious source evidence anything that Peirs Morgan digs up, because he ain’t a journalist, he’s a celeb hunter – just a jumped up, overblown, slightly posher and visble version of a paparazzi.

This interview was less about any serious issues than profile boosting – it was for GQ, goddamit! To be drawn into the mire by a lightweight like PM is a miscalculation by Clegg, but when you make a pact for mutual benefit with the devil, you shouldn’t be surprised that the devil will climb over you, since he sees the opportunity for his career promotion as more equal than yours.

It was a silly and fripperous line of questioning which Clegg failed to avoid or escape. The easiest way to undercut falling into the gap between moral equivalence and moral relativity is to explain the distinctions involved.

Over the Iraq issue (invasion and occupation, please, not war) this means highlighting the difference between attacking the government and attacking the population. Where it is possible to justify attacking a government, it is never possible to justify civilian deaths.

In this regard Piers Morgan behaved in the same way as the terrorists, trying to create the impression that one thing was the equivalent of the other in his self-promotion campaign, participating in destructive practices, rather than deconstruction followed by reconstruction.

Nick Clegg isn’t well briefed. The Iraq war was probably illegal however,

The occupation has been sanctioned by UN Resolutions and isn’t illegal.

International law isn’t a matter of legal nicities, it’s a matter of enforcement – legitimacy is the result of the outcome.

I wasn’t expecting the value or validity of what asked and what was said to be dismissed because it was Piers Morgan (who rightly opposed the war, invasion, occupation whatever you want to call it) and because it was GQ.

Nick Clegg was strictly correct in his response – the fact that he didn’t evade the question (well at least the first half), is to the good. And the comparison of moralities that Piers makes is absolutely the correct one.

The only response to that is ‘two-wrongs don’t make a right’ – it was the government who dragged the country to war – so it should be the decisionmakers responsible who should be dragged before the Hague. And in the meantime we, the people must resolve to pay reparations and resolve to hound out the warmongers from public life.

A good starting point would be to insist the government counts every dead Iraqi, and for each one an inquest be held.

Shariq, I think the passing of the resolution after the invasion – was a collective throwing up of hands of world opinion. But that is more than enough for those without shame or morals. They got what they wanted.