Ted Bromund: Tony Blair is not perfect, but he showed courage and judgment over Iraq

The Chilcot Inquiry has contributed nothing to this process. That is because it, too, is a manifestation of a civil war, in this case the one inside the Labour Party. The purpose of the inquiry is to assuage the tender consciences of Labour MPs by rubbishing Gordon Brown's predecessor, who is the only reason Brown is now Prime Minister.

But the mere existence of the inquiry can only imply that Brown had no idea what was going on in a government in which he was a leading figure.

Quite why Brown thought it was sensible to proceed with an inquiry that would call both his legitimacy and competence even further into question is more mysterious than the subject of the inquiry.

We know why Tony Blair, back in the political limelight campaigning for his successor, went to war. It was because Saddam was a mass murderer with an unhealthy obsession with weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). And unlike similar thugs, he had repeatedly been ordered to

prove he had disposed of his lethal toys by the Security Council, which Blair treated as a serious instrument of collective security.

Criticise Blair for being a liberal, if you will, but in the realm of foreign policy, he was a courageous one. From Sierra Leone to Kosovo to Iraq, his record was consistent and honourable.

The grounds for war were not that Saddam had WMDs, though the post-war Duelfer Inquiry confirmed that Saddam intended to restart his WMD programmes after the United Nations' corrupt and flagging sanctions collapsed completely.

The grounds for war were that given the secrecy, brutality, and proven mendacity of his regime, no one could be sure what WMDs Saddam had, and that he had failed to fulfil his obligation to provide a full, final, and complete accounting of his programmes.

Too much derision has been piled on Blair for this error. He was right to reject this as a shameful farce.

The charge that most excites Blair's pursuers is that he is personally guilty of waging an illegal war of aggression.

This is a dangerous claim because it threatens to make all national security decisions subject to the will of the so-called international community. In practice, this means they will be subject to veto by autocracies like Russia and China.

If this charge is credited, any future Prime Minister who refuses to kowtow to this coalition of the unwilling will end up in the dock. This will only make taking hard decisions even harder, especially as the death toll rises following yesterday's bombs in Baghdad.

Blair's opponents can criticise his conduct of the war, but no Conservative who believes in British sovereignty should criticise Blair's actions as illegal. Down that road lies the end of responsible government.

In the realm of foreign policy, Blair's error was to believe that the world, even after 9/11, was seriously interested in upholding the collective security responsibilities of the Security Council. Many distinguished personalities proclaim, as President Barack

Obama did in his Nobel Peace Prize Lecture, that "there must be consequences" for persistent failure to obey the Council.

But while many say it, few are willing to follow through. They demand action exclusively through the UN and then allow its perpetualparalysis

to become an excuse for inaction. As an American President put it, the only interest of dictators "is in a new one-way international law, which lacks mutuality in its observance and therefore becomes an instrument of oppression".

That President was not George W Bush. It was Franklin Roosevelt. When international law binds us but not Saddam, it benefits Saddam. That is not law. It is unilateral disarmament. By refusing to be caught in this trap, Blair proved himself a better liberal in the Roosevelt tradition than his critics on the Left, who are consumed by guilt about the supposed sins of the West.

As such, the Chilcot Inquiry is revealing nothing we did not already know about the war. It would have been better directed at a subject about which the Government, and Brown in particular, has been very quiet: Britain's disastrous occupation of Basra. The war was a stunning success: the failures came after Baghdad fell.

This mistake is not merely a matter for the history books. It is being made again in Afghanistan, where the right war, because of shoestring financial and rhetorical support from London, is losing the support of the British people. This failure will eventually be subject to an inquiry of its own. But for now, Brown has just about got away with it. Perhaps the distraction of the Chilcot Inquiry serves a purpose after all.

Ted Bromund is an American political commentator.