THE Labour Party rarely forgives a leader for being effective. Its veneration is reserved for the unfulfilled (John Smith), the naïve (George Lansbury) and the incompetent (Michael Foot). That tradition is unlikely to be disturbed in its conference debate on Iraq. Whatever happens to the motion calling for withdrawal of British troops, widespread support for that policy is unmistakable — and astonishing in an internationalist party.

Iraqis desire security; the postwar administration has not provided it. The notion that matters would improve by announcing a date for withdrawing troops is absurd. The jihadists will not wind down their campaign of bombings and beheadings; they will intensify it. The consequences for Iraq of a depletion of coalition forces scarcely bear thinking about. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s barbarism is directed not only at Westerners but also at Iraqi Muslims. He maintains that Shias are “ the most evil of mankind”, hence the campaign to assassinate religious leaders.

Unfortunately today’s debate has more to do with Labour’s internal politics than Iraq’s needs. It bears repeating, then, that Tony Blair’s support for the Iraq war was far from being, as Lib Dems claimed last week, the biggest foreign policy blunder since Suez. It was the most strategically far-sighted and noble British stance since the founding of Nato.

Its importance lay — just as Mr Blair said — in weapons of mass destruction: not because Saddam had them, but because he did not have them and wanted them. Removing a barbarous regime without risking regional conflagration was an opportunity rightly taken. It interdicted the obvious route by which theocratic totalitarianism could mount still more horrific attacks than the one on 9/11. The regime had links to terrorism and a demonstrated wish to wage aggressive war.

War was humanitarian: Saddam slaughtered 300,000 Shia after the first Gulf War. To protest that as these massacres were historic, intervention to rescue the survivors was unjustified, recalls the Major Government’s abandonment of the Bosnian Muslims. When new Labour took office, the Foreign Secretary promised a foreign policy with an ethical dimension. How strange that he and others in the Labour Party should now protest at its being carried out.

The author’s weblog is at oliverkamm.typepad.com/blog/