Dan Jarvis: There is no easy answer to the questions over Iraq war

I have spent a lot of time thinking about what we were asked to do. It is important to look closely at the detail of “Iraq”, but hopefully we can start to think about the lessons that have been identified (not necessarily learned) without the recriminations that go with it. What have I learned?

That sometimes it is right and necessary to use force as a 
country – or at least, it is the best of a range of bad options. However, there is a natural consequence to that – war is
hell – it never turns out how you expect.

It carries terrible human and moral cost and gives us a burdening responsibility for the way we fight, and for how we reach the decision to do so.

I knew when I was serving in Iraq and later in Afghanistan, that the business of war – is horrific. Even with best efforts to the contrary, often many of the lives lost are innocent.

The figures tell their own story. In Iraq, over 110,000 civilians died since 2003. Since 2006, more than 12,000 civilians died in Afghanistan. More than 600 British soldiers died in these conflicts, with thousands more injured.

The economic cost is also great: £25bn spent by the UK in Afghanistan and Iraq. As Iraq demonstrates, the consequences of war – its costs and aftermath – can be much, much greater than predicted.

So, I have learned that if we 
are to fight, we must be 
ruthlessly clear about the cost; moral and physical. And this cost exists no matter how just the cause.

I have learned that great cost means great responsibility. The decision to go to war is the most serious a politician can take. It must be a last resort.

The 2003 conflict in Iraq was the first where the decision to go to war was debated and voted on, in the House of Commons. Unless Britain is under immediate threat, a Leader and their Cabinet, will in future, be unlikely to take the country to war without it being debated. “Iraq” has changed the parliamentary conventions governing this most important decision.

As a soldier, my duty was to carry out the decision to use force to the best of my ability. As a politician, my duty is to scrutinise the case for that decision with ruthless and dispassionate care. That is what I did when we were debating the decision to intervene in Libya. Recent events in North Africa or even Iran may yet offer similar tests.

The one thing the terrible cost of war does not mean though, is that it is too awful to ever contemplate.

I wish it were that simple. We live in an imperfect world where both action and inaction have consequences. We have to decide between them without fully knowing what those consequences will be.

The debate about whether it was right to intervene in Iraq will go on – we should have this debate, but in a way that looks forward, not back.

The reality is that there is no perfect option. Politics, war and life are never neat; they are always messy, imperfect and less than ideal.

We have a duty to recognise this reality and to do all we can to avoid its necessity. There is no easy, moral position to take. We need the strength to face up to the reality, the heavy burden, the duty which is on our conscience and our judgment, on how we undertake the responsibility that has been placed upon us as best we can.

Our true duty is not to avoid conflict at any cost, but to make absolutely sure that if it happens, it is truly necessary.