I was interested to see Oxfam director Barbara Stocking (The world before Iraq, April 11) claiming that the UK “arguably pursued a relatively successful foreign policy until the misadventure in Iraq.” Britain illegally bombed Iraq in 1998, was the chief apologist for Russia’s bloody onslaught against Chechnya in 1999, increased the export of military equipment to Israel as it reinvaded the West Bank in 2001, armed Indonesia as it attacked Aceh province in 2003, took legal action to prevent the Chagossians returning to their homeland on Diego Garcia and continued to support some of the world’s most brutal governments in Colombia, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere – to name some of Labour’s shocking policies that could fill this page.
Letter to the Guardian, 13 April 2007. Read More