Good to see some commonsense from Sir Malcolm Rifkind.
Former Foreign Secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind has written for this week's Spectator (not yet online) and urged the Conservative Party to split with Tony Blair on three foreign policy fronts:
"There must be a clear recognition that the invasion of Iraq was a serious mistake that has helped the terrorists. It has also made Iran the power in the Gulf. While the government may be in denial, there is no need for the Conservative party to be. That does not mean, however, that British troops should be withdrawn from Iraq. It is essential that they remain there as long as their presence might help the Iraqis."
"Conservatives should not accept Blair’s simplistic belief that all Muslim terrorism is part of a single plot. Conservatives are rightly suspicious of a Manichaean division of the world into good and bad; terrorist and freedom-loving. The war in Chechnya, for example, is between Chechen nationalists and Russian nationalists, not between terror and freedom. The same applies to Kashmir. The Israeli–Palestinian issue is also much more than a battle against Hamas and Hezbollah terrorism."
"Conservatives should reject a philosophy of pre-emptive wars (or, as Blair prefers to call it, liberal interventionism) fought by ‘coalitions of the willing’."
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