War & Peace Quote by Kenneth Clarke

“It would be immoral” is doing a lot of political heavy lifting here: Clarke isn’t just arguing policy, he’s staking out the moral high ground in a debate where the facts on the ground are ugly and the options are worse. By framing withdrawal as an ethical failure rather than a strategic recalculation, he shifts the burden of proof. The question stops being “Did we have the right to go in?” and becomes “How dare we leave?”

The subtext is a preemptive rebuttal to anti-war sentiment that had begun to crystallize into a simple demand: end it, bring troops home. Clarke’s line insists that the invasion created obligations that can’t be discharged with a timetable. “Consequences of our actions” is a quiet admission of responsibility, but it’s also a way to narrow accountability: not “the consequences of our misjudgments” or “of the decision to invade,” just the generic aftereffects that now need managing.

Then comes the fear-image: “anarchy and civil war in Iraq.” It’s a vivid, almost binary tableau that makes continued involvement sound like the only barrier between order and catastrophe. The rhetoric isn’t subtle, and it isn’t meant to be. It taps into a post-intervention anxiety: that the West, having broken a state, will be judged not only for the breaking but for abandoning the pieces.

Context matters: Clarke is a Conservative politician with a reputation for pragmatism, not romantic crusades. That’s why the moral language lands with particular force. It reads as reluctant duty, not zeal, a tone designed to reassure centrists that staying isn’t about imperial pride; it’s about cleaning up a mess you helped make.