'Everything we think about the wars on terror is wrong'

Matthew d'Ancona

20 May 2006

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Philip Bobbitt tells Matthew d’Ancona, we must start from scratch if we are to beat the terrorists

The key, Bobbitt says, is to put the rule of law at the heart of your strategy, to give the emerging ‘market state’ the legitimacy to act decisively rather than to appear – as, in his view, the US did in Iraq – like a bunch of con men, peddling false information (dodgy dossiers), being deferential to corporations (Halliburton) and contracting out its dirty work (the ‘private interrogators’ at Abu Ghraib).

‘What [the Bush] administration has done – and I support the war in Iraq – what they have done is heartbreaking, because they have steadily removed the greatest source of their power, which was the rule of the law. You may think of Abu Ghraib as a battle, and we lost. Guantanamo is a battle that we have lost. It will cost us lives, it will cost us political influence, and above all it may cost us our strategic objectives. Not simply by ignoring it, but by having a studied contempt for the law, and not just international law, which needs desperately to be reformed, but for even our domestic laws. The administration has kicked away what should have been its strongest prop. It baffles me. And it angers me.’