Leading article: From loyalty came tragedy

More and more, it seems that Al Gore's failure to win a few hundred more votes in Florida in November 2000 was a fateful moment of world history. Indeed, it could be said that the opening of the 21st century was decided by a single vote. As Bill Clinton once said, George Bush won the 2000 election "fair and square, five to four at the Supreme Court".

The consequence of that decision is still being played out in the daily carnage of the death squads and suicide bombers in Iraq, and for us in Britain, more parochially, in the ruin of Tony Blair's once-great promise.

Had Mr Gore become president, it is possible, to put it no higher, that Mr Blair's idealism in foreign affairs could have been sustained. He was brave and right to co-opt the threat of American military force to rescue the Kosovo Albanians from murderous persecution in 1999. Mr Gore and Mr Blair would no doubt have stood "shoulder to shoulder" after 11 September 2001. They would have led a global effort to remove the Taliban in Afghanistan and to rebuild the country. But they probably would not have sought to use the new - and short-lived - support among the American people for pre-emptive military action to try to remake Iraq.

How many Iraqis would be alive today we cannot know, nor how much safer we in Britain would be, to be more parochial again. But it is certain both the United Nations and the European Union would be stronger, and the spirit of idealism that inspired Nato in Kosovo would have had a better chance of being put into practice around the world.

Instead, when Mr Blair promised that "we here in Britain stand shoulder to shoulder with our American friends", he was not expressing solidarity between peoples: he meant that he personally would stand by President Bush. And that meant he was committed to Mr Bush's strategic misjudgement, to declare "war on terror".

That gave the small number of adherents of a death cult the status they craved of soldiers in a holy war, a status that made their cult more attractive to potential recruits.

The Iraq invasion and the disastrous occupation then provided another boost to the recruitment and motivation of copycat suicide bombers, including the home-grown variety in this and other Western countries. Of course, as Mr Blair says, the terrorists are wrong to use Iraq as an excuse. But it was foreseeable - and indeed foreseen, including by the security services - that they would.

One by one, the justifications for the Iraq war have fallen away. The most persuasive, although it was not the ostensible cause of war, is that it has removed a terrible dictator who was a threat to his own people and those of neighbouring countries. Yet the death toll in Iraq since 2003 is now so great almost any other course of action seems preferable.

No wonder Labour ministers who want to stay in office after Mr Blair has gone have begun to rewrite history. Geoff Hoon, who was Secretary of State for Defence at the time, last week blamed the mistakes made by the Americans after the invasion and said that the British Government had opposed the disbanding of the Iraqi army and the policy of de-Baathification.

They want to defend a fall-back position, which is that the invasion of Iraq would have worked if it had not been for the bone-headed decisions of Donald Rumsfeld, now conveniently dispatched to the wilderness. But it will not do. The invasion was fundamentally misconceived, and Leo Docherty is today right to express the anger widely felt in the armed forces at being sent on an impossible mission, although it must be hoped that the mission in Afghanistan can still be rescued from logistics and planning errors.

It is not necessary to question Mr Blair's integrity in joining the invasion of Iraq to criticise his judgement. His misjudgement has unleashed forces that present a "real and present danger" to this country far greater than anything Saddam could offer. And he has unleashed death and destruction in Iraq on a terrible scale, which shows no sign of abating despite the last throw of the American "surge".

It could have been so different. Mr Gore could have been President, but even if he had lost "fair and square" Mr Blair need not have attached Britain so firmly to the disastrous rhetoric and policies of Mr Bush. Then we would be admiring his leadership on Kosovo and Afghanistan, on Africa and climate change, and arguing over how many more years he should keep Gordon Brown waiting.

Instead, we contemplate the ruin of Iraq and the ruin of Mr Blair's reputation.

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