We Are All Moral Cowards

Scott Ritter, the senior UN weapons inspector in Iraq between 1991 and 1998, says our failure to properly condemn the Iraq War has made cowards of us all.

"British and US governments made a deliberate decision to enter into a conflict of their choosing, not one that was thrust upon them. We invaded Iraq to free Iraqis from a dictator who, by some accounts, oversaw the killing of about 300,000 of his subjects - although no one has been able to verify more than a small fraction of the figure. If it is correct, it took Saddam decades to reach such a horrific statistic. The US and UK have, it seems, reached a third of that total in just 18 months...

There are many culpable individuals and organisations history will hold to account for the war - from deceitful politicians and journalists to acquiescent military professionals and silent citizens of the world's democracies...

But we all are moral cowards when it comes to Iraq. Our collective inability to summon the requisite shame and rage when confronted by an estimate of 100,000 dead Iraqi civilians in the prosecution of an illegal and unjust war not only condemns us, but adds credibility to those who oppose us. The fact that a criminal such as Osama bin Laden can broadcast a videotape on the eve of the US presidential election in which his message is viewed by many around the world as a sober argument in support of his cause is the harshest indictment of the failure of the US and Britain to implement sound policy in the aftermath of 9/11. The death of 3,000 civilians on that horrible day represented a tragedy of huge proportions. Our continued indifference to a war that has slaughtered so many Iraqi civilians, and will continue to kill more, is in many ways an even greater tragedy: not only in terms of scale, but also because these deaths were inflicted by our own hand in the course of an action that has no defence. "

Guardian story here: The war on Iraq has made moral cowards of us all.

As an ordinary person who has been totally outraged by our governments' lies, our military forces' bloodshed and our media's willful disengagement from the stark reality of what has happened, I do not post this as an indictment of my fellow citizens, but rather as an acknowledgement that I, too, should have and could have done more to stop the loss of life, the collapse of values and the assault on reason that we have witnessed over the past three years.

Let us hope the madness is coming to an end. But with US forces readying for an all-out assault on Falluja, and with Kerry so far failing to set out a more enlightened vision for Iraq, it seems there will remain much work to be done, even if Bush is defeated tomorrow.