Dear David,

“Isn’t it exhausting,” you say, “this merry-go-round of argument, always in motion, never going anywhere?” “I sighed” (you add) “to see ancient quotes . . . ” “We must” (you conclude) “begin to look at Iraq in the longer term . . . ”

Actually, no. It isn’t exhausting. This argument is vital. Nor is it true that it’s “never going anywhere”. It has moved and it’s moving. It has moved in the direction of demonstrating the deep unwisdom of the doctrine of quick-fire armed intervention by Washington, without international sanction, to remove old regimes and install new ones. You supported that doctrine.

The old quotes matter because your voice was influential among British columnists and gave comfort to politicians, particularly new Labour politicians, not least because you came not from the Right, but enjoyed, instead, the credentials of a left-of-centre thinker and journalist.

I am pleased to see you now think that with the benefit of hindsight the whole thing was a mistake. Perhaps I should have picked this up more clearly from your columns over the years but I must say I had not.

You now ask that we desist from what you suggest is a wearisome and useless argument. Again, no. If I thought that the opinions of columnists and commentators in Britain and abroad were of no account, I would cease to write for newspapers. If I thought that arguments between media voices were so much futile babble, going nowhere, I would not contribute to them. If I thought that all necessary lessons had now been learnt from Britain’s colossal blunder in the Middle East, and the implications for future policy agreed, I would be happy to move on, as (echoing a favourite phrase of the instigator of Britain’s part in this war, Tony Blair) you seem to urge.

But I won’t move on. The neocons and their supporters have lost this argument, David, and they have done Britain and Britain’s standing in the world tremendous damage. I do not lay to their discredit the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths, as I do not think they envisaged these, and nor am I sure Iraq’s history would in the end have allowed the region to be stabilised by anything other than exhaustion. But there have been British deaths, too, and all to no purpose – or no result.

You ask me to direct my thoughts and our discussion towards the future of Iraq, starting from where we are now. Again, no. We are almost powerless to determine that future. Heaven knows what the British Cabinet think any more, but what perhaps you, your British fellow hawks and a range of American voices have yet to acknowledge is that the United States – still less we British – has lost leverage. It is almost out of our hands. The situation is probably farther from our control than would have been the case if the invasion had never taken place. For you and me to discuss the future of Iraq and what ought to happen there and why really would be exhausting because it’s pointless.

There remains point in argument about the past: for two reasons. If we can agree without qualification that this intervention was a very bad idea, and that those who supported it erred, we can perhaps nail down the coffin of American imperialism, separate Britain’s reputation and good name from the Bush Administration and its ideas and discredit support for American unilateralism among British journalists.

Join me in this, David, and I shall be happy to “move on”

Yours sincerely,

M Parris

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