Andrew Grice: The Week in Politics

There's no way to dodge the Iraq inheritance

Five years on, the history of the Iraq war is being rewritten by those who played a role in it. No wonder they try. In their worst dreams in 2003, surely they could not have imagined that Iraq would be in the state it's in today.

There have been a lot of "if onlys" this week. If only the Americans had put in more troops at the outset, British ministers sigh. If only they had listened to us and not disbanded the Iraqi army, leaving a vacuum for al-Qa'ida to exploit. There's a different version on the other side of the pond, where some in the Bush administration don't recall the Brits making much fuss at the time.

Jonathan Powell, who was Tony Blair's chief of staff and longest-serving aide, published a fascinating book on Thursday, the fifth anniversary of the Iraq invasion. Unfortunately, the timing was about yesterday's 10th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement and his book, Great Hatred, Little Room, is about the Northern Ireland peace process. In the index, there are 112 references to the IRA but none to Iraq.

Mr Powell was given special access to Whitehall papers so he could chronicle the peace process in which he played a pivotal role.

In media interviews to promote his book, Mr Powell was asked more questions about Iraq than Northern Ireland. He explained that he had not written about Iraq because, unlike the peace process, it is not over yet.

He doubtless hopes Mr Blair will get the credit he deserves on Northern Ireland when his legacy is assessed. When he stood down as Prime Minister, more attention was rightly paid to Iraq. Mr Powell – like Mr Blair himself – hopes that history will be kinder to him over Iraq.

Mr Powell said he took full responsibility for the war but did not feel "shame or guilt" about it. "I think it was right to get rid of Saddam Hussein," he added. "It would have better if we had been clear that the aim should be to get rid of Saddam ... With the benefit of hindsight, we should have made more of the threat that Saddam was to his own people."

You can see where the Blair camp is heading: if only "regime change" rather than non-existent weapons of mass destruction had been our casus belli. Ironically, George Bush, the man calling the shots, did use "regime change" as well as WMD. In Britain, the legal advice about toppling Saddam was decidedly wobbly, so Mr Blair used WMD as cover.

Mr Powell's retrospective attempt to justify the war doesn't quite work. He has perhaps forgotten that Mr Blair told the Commons three weeks beforehand: "I detest his [Saddam's] regime ... but even now he could save it by complying with the UN's demand."

He conceded that the biggest mistake was the failure to predict the "suffering and bloodshed" that would follow the removal of Saddam. In America, even some neo-conservatives acknowledged that military might alone cannot guarantee peace. This echoes Gordon Brown and David Miliband as they try to move on from Iraq.

Mr Brown's guiding star is the need to "win hearts and minds" in the Muslim world, both abroad and at home. He speaks in code as he tries to distance himself from the Iraq disaster, hoping people will regard it as "Blair's war".

Again, it doesn't quite wash. Mr Brown backed Mr Blair's stance at the 2005 election. He signed the cheques for the conflict, which are still coming in. Perhaps he would like us to think he might have acted differently. But one closely involved in the fateful decision five years ago told me: "I think he would have done the same."

It seemed that Mr Brown's anniversary strategy was to try to stop the words "Brown" and "Iraq" appearing in the same headline. He promised for the first time that there would be an inquiry but dashed Labour hopes that he would mark the anniversary by setting one up.

The Prime Minister can't avoid his inheritance any more than Mr Blair can escape his legacy. It was Mr Brown who hoped that the number of British troops in Iraq, currently about 4,100, would be cut to 2,500 "from the spring" of this year. He must be hoping the cold spell continues for some time.

On Tuesday, the Conservative Party will propose an inquiry into the conflict to ensure all lessons are learnt. It, too, is trying to rewrite history. Without its support, Mr Blair would have lost the crucial Commons vote and Britain would not have gone to war. The only party that doesn't want to rewind the tape is the Liberal Democrats, whose opposition to the war has been totally vindicated.

The other casualty of Iraq is the noble cause of liberal interventionism against evil regimes. Supporters expressed the hope this week that events in Iraq would not make it less likely to happen in future. I hope they are right, but fear they are wrong.