It's hard to know where to start on this one. I suppose the best place might be the views of Owen Harries, who has criticised the invasion from the conservative side of politics.

If I can summarise his opinions, crudely, but I hope not unfairly, they run along these lines. These are that morality has no place in foreign policy. So long as a nation does not disturb the international peace, what it does to its own citizens is not a matter of which foreign policy and diplomacy need take much note. No matter how egregious or vile its abuses of human rights no nation is justified in taking military action to unseat the regime concerned. However, if the nation attacks others then the nations which have been attacked, along with a coalition of others, if need be, may proceed to defend themselves. However, the question of whether any nation should join that coalition is to be decided solely by reference to that particular nation's own self-interest.

The Harries view may seem somewhat harsh to some. But some variant of it seems to be a common theme amongst those who opposed the recent war against Iraq. The argument generally expressed was that as Iraq was not presently at war with its neighbours, or any one else for that matter, military action to overthrow its regime was unjustified. The fact that the Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein had slaughtered Iraquis in the hundreds of thousands did not amount to a proper cause for war. Some of those in that camp did have the intellectual honesty to admit and confess as much. Some, however, like the egregious Michael Moore, tried to gloss over the issue and pretend that life in Iraq was fine before the US invaded.

It need hardly be said that if we adopt the Harries approach the 2003 invasion of Iraq cannot be justified.

I have to say that I have difficulty accepting his thesis. If, indeed, morality has no role to play in shaping foreign policy, or justifying the use of military force, it seems strange that throughout most of human history wars have been justified, or rationalised, by precisely such means. Few soldiers, unless they are pure mercenaries, are willing to lay down their lives simply in order to secure some politician's view of the national self-interest. It seems a strange system of thought which would require them to do so.

Even if we accept the view that national self-interest is the operative criterion here we have to ask ourselves whether it is in a nation's self interest to tolerate the existence of regimes which grossly abuse human rights. A nation which pays scant heed to the rights of its own citizens is often very likely to pay much regard to the rights of anyone else's citizens as well. Time and time again history has shown that regimes which brutalise their own people are the ones most likely to wage war and disturb the international peace.

It also seems strange to take a position which will not see hands raised when a government inflicts violence upon its own citizens but nevertheless regards it as a legitimate cause for war when the same thing is done to the citizens of another country. Apparently we are to oppose it when violence is inflicted upon those who, having their own government, can defend themselves but to remain supine when it is inflicted upon those who, precisely because their own government is the aggressor, are unable to do so.

Unfortunately for the Harries position, and the variants of it which have been adopted and supported by the peace lobby, Iraq had some pretty serious form for invading and attacking its neighbours. In 1980 it commenced a largely unprovoked war against its neighbour Iran. Ten years later, in 1990, it proceeded to invade and occupy its neighbour Kuwait. During the course of the war which was conducted to dislodge that occupation it launched unprovoked missile attacks against Israel.

The Left has made much of the fact that links between Saddam and the terrorist group, Al Qaeda, were tenuous if not altogether non-existent. However, there is no doubt that the Iraqi regime was a major sponsor and supporter of terrorist violence committed in Israel by Palestinian organisations. A government which promotes criminal violence aimed at destabilising and ultimately destroying another nation is scarcely seeking to live in peace with its neighbours.

Yes, it is true that Iraq had been defeated in the first Gulf war of 1991. However, it had persistently defied and frustrated directives designed to ensure its disarmament as well as the world's satisfaction that it had done so. Sanctions were in place against the regime but these were being widely evaded by all sorts of corrupt means. Moreover, the continuation of the will to implement those sanctions was by no means assured.

Many on that side of politics now conveniently seek to avoid the fact, but prior to the war the Western Left was beginning to crank up a campaign which would seek to have those sanctions discontinued. The argument was that sanctions had brought about a prejudicial effect upon infant mortality in that country with the result that hundreds of thousands of children had died unnecessarily. When invasion was proposed echoes of that campaign died away pretty suddenly. The peace lobby, predominantly of the Left, then proceeded, hypocritically, to maintain that sanctions were an effective method of confining and containing the Hussein regime.

In short, on almost any view, the Hussein regime had long ago forfeited the right to continue in existence. It had undertaken the mass murder of its own citizens. In so doing it had employed technologies, such as the release of poisonous gases, which most civilised nations regard as unacceptable. It had demonstrated intentions to acquire weapons of mass destruction. Moreover, it had persistently evaded and frustrated measures taken by the international community to ensure that those intentions could not be fulfilled. In addition to attacking and invading other nations it had shown no signs that any fundamental change of character had occurred. I have to say that the arguments against that action are unconvincing.

The weakest of those arguments is that by taking this action the US and its allies have made themselves unpopular. However, anti-Americanism was alive and well long before the second Gulf war. Osama bin Laden had launched his atrocities of 11 September 2001 at a time when the war was not even contemplated. In any event, ethics are not the proper subject of a popularity contest. A truly ethical individual does what is right, not what is designed to make him loved by all.

Another argument is based on events since the war. This is broadly reflected in the ``quagmirist'' view, assiduously peddled by a variety of Western journalists. In this analysis, Iraq has degenerated into some kind of shemozzle where a lot of people are being killed. While this is possibly the strongest case which its opponents have advanced against the war it is also unconvincing. So far as American casualties are concerned, these still remain at a relatively light level. One does not conquer a country without paying some sort of price in terms of human lives. However, the figure, which now exceeds some 2,000, is minor by comparison with other wars which America has fought. Between 10 and 15 times that number could be slaughtered in a single battle of the American civil war.

So far as Iraqi casualties are concerned, it seems that opponents of the war have endeavoured to magnify these as much as possible. Figures of 100,000 have been regularly bandied about, but these are doubtful. The best estimates arrive at a figure of about 30,000. Many of these deaths have not been caused by the Americans so much as those who seek to have them expelled. Moreover, these figures must compared with the Hussein regime's propensity for murder. Had the invasion not occurred it is quite likely that similar numbers of Iraqis would have been dead by now in any event.

So far as the so-called ``resistance'' is concerned it has proved remarkably ineffective. It has not been able to prevent the occupation from conducting free and fair elections. It is not been able to ignite any kind of popular uprising against either the Americans or the newly elected Iraqi government. It is worthy of note that in Iraq there have been virtually no popular demonstrations or protests against either the American occupation or the war which preceded it. This might be usefully compared with Jordan, where some 300,000 Jordanians staged a spontaneous protest against the the ``resistance'' leader, al-Zarqawi, after he had staged a murderous suicide bombing at a wedding reception in Amman.

Outrages like this, which claim many more Arab and Muslim lives than they do those of Westerners, are scarcely winning the terrorists much support in the Islamic world. Now, in desperation, it seems, they are trying to engineer a religious civil war by bombing Shi-ite mosques. Despite these provocations, the various Iraqi religious groups have so far resisted the temptation, declining the terrorists' invitation to rise up and to take the bait.

Another argument which is frequently made against the war runs along the lines that by commencing its invasion of Iraq America is guilty of double standards. It is a bit like the argument of a protester busily breaching the peace who complains that the police have arrested him but failed to do the same with his colleague, when both of them were engaged in pretty much the same sort of unlawful activity.

Those who adhere to this view observe that there are other countries which have a much worse human rights record than does Iraq but America leaves them alone. To illustrate this point fingers are frequently directed at North Korea, a nation whose left-wing policies have, in the last decade alone, precipitated famines in which between two and five million people are variously estimated to have died.

This argument is in my opinion another non-starter. The reason why America, sensibly, leaves the appalling North Korean polity alone is that it is possessed of nuclear weapons and indicates every appearance of being willing to use them. No matter how desirable it may be to rid the world of this regime, a war to do so could easily see some resort to warfare of this kind. A single nuclear strike on a city like Seoul could lead to the deaths of many millions. The Left conveniently sneers at this argument now, but it was precisely in order to prevent Saddam acquiring a nuclear capability that American sought to remove him from power.

In any event America, and indeed the world, is entitled to take a fairly pragmatic view about the way in which they should prioritise nations which have made themselves compelling candidates for regime change. Yes there are, for example, in Africa governments (that of the Marxist, Robert Mugabe, comes readily to mind) of which most, if not all, would like to be well rid. However, a nation which, like Iraq, sits at the heart of the Middle East, one of the world's most sensitive and volatile regions, and offers gratuitous aggression to its neighbours may be reasonably seen as requiring a higher degree of attention than a nation whose geographical location places it more at the periphery of global concerns.

Another argument is that the war lacked legitimacy because it was not authorised by the United Nations. I have to say that I have difficulty understanding how that morally bankrupt organisation could confer legitimacy upon anything. Its very own human rights committee has recruited to its membership, indeed even its chairmanship, some of the world's violators of basic human rights. What can one say of a human rights committee which invites nations such as Libya and Saddam's Iraq to take up its presidency? Due to the chronic paralysis of its ``Security'' Council it has failed to intervene in or prevent virtually all of the conflicts which have occurred since the time of its formation. Some of those conflicts, such as Bosnia and the perennial feuding of the Tutsis and Hutus in Central Africa have been internecine in the extreme.

The permanent members of that Council have included among their number - I speak here of the Soviet Union and Communist China - some of the most murderous tyrannies which human history has ever seen. According to a recently published work the regime of Mao Zedong was responsible for bringing about the deaths of some 70 million people. The full number of those who died under Joseph Stalin's rule will probably never be known, but might easily amount to a figure half as great again. And yet in what must amount to one of the most grotesque ironies of the last six decades this pair of nations was installed on to that Council and bidden to act as guardians of world peace.

Surely any the legitimacy of any exercise which receives the sanction of such a dysfunctional organisation as the United Nations must not be so much enhanced, but seriously impaired, by reason of that fact.

Lastly, the opposition to the war seems to have emerged from a sort of nihilistic stance which has emerged from those strands of the Left which are more than usually divorced from reality. It seems to run along the lines that if we just think beautiful, pious thoughts and dance naked among the cool, green hills of Byron Bay the regime of Saddam Hussein and all of its abominable works will just vanish in a puff of environmentally friendly, non-greenhouse-gas-inducing, non-carcinogenic smoke. This strain of thinking - one uses the term loosely - seems to be best summarised by that oft-repeated refrain - ``war never solved anything''.

Well, I have news for those who take this view - war solves and changes all sorts of things. The people of France now speak their language, effectively a variant of late Latin, and not some version of Celtic speech, because in the decades preceding the birth of Christ, Julius Caesar waged there a successful war of conquest. The very language in which this article is written, English, arose because a series of German tribes invaded, conquered and made their homes in a land which was once occupied solely by the race of the Romano-Britons.

If that language now has a distinctly Latin flavour it is because those invading Anglo-Saxons were in their turn conquered at Hastings by the French-speaking Normans. A thousand years ago there was not a single Turk in Turkey. But, because the Byzantines lost the battle of Manzikert the whole of Anatolia was ultimately given over to a people and a language which had their origins in Central Asia. Tell this message, that war's outcomes change nothing, to the Greeks, who in their own homeland languished for some four centuries under the rule of that people.

I am very much afraid that war can change all sorts of things. And if we allow aggressive, militaristic regimes to remain in power we may find those things changing in ways which we would not prefer.

Brad Row