The prospect of war in Iraq is a test of real leadership

But the fact is that if Saddam has learnt his lesson, he is certainly is not showing it.

So at what point will they reluctantly accept that intervention is necessary? John McDonald, a British Labor MP and thorn in Tony Blair’s side suggests intervention only take place when nuclear attack is imminent and then only if authorised by the Security Council! (BBC World Service, 3 September 2002). This will surely be far too late.

In previous crises some of those in public life – leaders more than in name – have had the ability to recognise before others that we were under a serious threat, and that urgent action was necessary. Winston Churchill is the most obvious example. In more recent years, when so many in the West scoffed at them and wanted anything from unilateral disarmament to say, no cruise missiles, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher gave the West the backbone it needed to stare down the USSR until it collapsed from its own contradictions. Today George W. Bush and Tony Blair are warning us that the West is in serious danger.

Unless Saddam now does what he promised to do more than a decade ago, the US, the UK and their close allies will have to act, preferably with strong Western support and sufficient quiet co-operation from certain middle Eastern countries. Even if the evidence is then overwhelming, some in the West will still choose the option identified by Daniel Pipes when he was in Sydney. They will be freeloaders. To Australia’s great credit, she never falls into that class.