You can vaccinate key military personnel against smallpox. But you can’t inoculate the British Left against its own strain of wilful stupidity.

The Government yesterday chose to highlight the grotesque campaign of torture and brutalisation which President Saddam Hussein has been inflicting on his own people. Drawing on the work of the United Nations and human rights organisations, the Foreign Office briefly sketched the scale of Saddam’s depravity. His regime beats detainees on the soles of their feet with metal cables until they lose consciousness, suspends individuals from the ceilings of cells while their ligaments tear, bores holes in the hands of prisoners and then pours acid into the wound, gouges the eyes out of its citizens and licenses official rapists. Saddam’S ruling clique inflicts these punishments as a matter of deliberate policy, ruling by terror, presiding over what the distinguished Iraqi dissident Kinin Midday calls a “republic of fear”.

None is immune from Sadden’S calculating use of torture as a means of social control. It is not just the method he uses to cow his citizens, it is also the mechanism by which he imposes collective responsibility on his Cabinet. Two of the brothers of Iraq’S Foreign Minister, Naja Sabre, have been held by Saddam’s torturers and one, Muhammad, died at their hands. Last year the son of Iraq’s Deputy Prime Minister, Tariq Aziz, was sentenced to 22 years in prison, then released, then rearrested, then released again. The habitual use of arbitrary power, and random violence, characterises Saddam’s method of government. The men whom he chooses to act as his mouthpieces are broken creatures whose lives, and families, exist at Saddam’s pleasure.

When Mr Sabri and Mr Aziz do the Iraqi dictator’s bidding we know they speak with his gun at their back. But what is Irene Khan’s excuse?

Ms Khan is the Secretary-General of Amnesty International and, as of yesterday, number one pin-up girl in Baghdad’s presidential palaces. For her reaction to the publication of the British Government’s dossier on Saddam’s human rights abuses was not satisfaction that one of the world’s most evil men was facing the scrutiny he deserved, but anger that something might be done about him.

“This selective attention to human rights,” Ms Khan pronounced, “is nothing but a cold and calculated manipulation of the work of human rights activists.” Why is Ms Khan’s reaction to this dossier condemnation for the British Government rather than the Iraqi? You would have thought that if Amnesty International were objecting to anyone’s cold and calculated manipulation, it would be the Iraqi regime’s wrenching of innocent civilians’ arms out of their sockets.

Having taken part in a Channel 4 debate with Ms Khan, in which she appeared for those arguing against the War on Terror, I know where she is coming from — that unhappy section of the British Left whose antipathy to Western policy makes them Saddam’s useful idiots. Like the Labour MP George Galloway, the Labour NEC member Mark Seddon, the FBU leader Andy Gilchrist, the Mayor of London Ken Livingstone or any of those currently arguing against action to topple Saddam, Ms Khan stands in the way of liberating a tortured nation. Why is it that so many of those whose political creed should be driven by a desire to emancipate those who are suffering choose to object to a course of action which would deliver millions from misery?

There are certainly objections which anyone with a properly progressive conscience could make towards Western policy in Iraq. But they are not those of Ms Khan or her cohorts. The most telling criticism which any genuine human rights activist could make of the West’s current stance is its decision to go down “the UN route” and return weapons inspectors to Iraq.

As matters stand, the British and American Governments have chosen to put a discredited means above a valuable end. Seeking the approval of the United Nations for any action to deal with Iraq is the equivalent of asking a Mafia conclave for permission to tackle the Corleone family. Many of those who speak at the UN are representative of no one save the kleptocratic or autocratic cliques who hold power by force in their respective states. Deferring to their judgment does not lend sanctity to a course of action, it may even tarnish it. Those on the Left who argue that action against Iraq is justified only with United Nations backing are subcontracting their moral judgment to the butchers of Tiananmen Square, the Baathist dictatorship of Syria and Africa’s choicest murderers.

The same moral failure, the abdication of judgment, is apparent in the reliance many place on the UN’s weapons inspectors. As individuals, many of these men and women are no doubt worthy souls. But as a method for dealing with the evil which is Saddam’s Iraq they are sadly inadequate. The chief weapons inspector, Hans Blix, has a truly shaming record of failure. Right up until the Gulf War of 1990-91 Mr Blix claimed that Iraq’s compliance with weapons inspections was exemplary, and only after Iraq’s defeat in that war was the full and terrifying extent of Saddam’s progress towards nuclear bomb-making revealed.

The sorry record of past weapons inspections which have run into the sand and past UN resolutions which have left a tyrant at leisure to torture underlines the inescapable truth of dealing with Saddam. The only way to get rid of the arsenal with which he hopes to terrorise us is to get rid of the man who so enjoys terrorising his own people.

The only thing left puzzling me is why those who claim to believe in human rights are not willing to see something worthwhile done to uphold them.

michael.gove@thetimes.co.uk

Contribute to Debate via
comment@thetimes.co.uk

Times Recommends

• It’s the beginning of the affair
• Afghanistan: still a price worth paying
• Heroes of the downtrodden