IQ2 kicked off its spring debating season with a timely topic - one that was given greater immediacy by the Iraqi elections, which concluded shortly after this debate had taken place. Arguing in support of the motion was the Guardian columnist Simon Jenkins, director of the ‘Conflicts Forum’ Alastair Crooke, and Rosemary Hollis of Chatham House. Opposing the motion was the journalist William Shawcross, the mercenary Tim Spicer (CEO of a ‘private security company’, in politically correct parlance), and the Iranian journalist Amir Taheri.

The champions of the two sides were the pugnacious Jenkins and the more gentle but equally implacable Taheri, respectively. Although Taheri succeeded in out-maneuvering Jenkins with the tiresome semantics of what ‘now’ means precisely, the debate threw up some interesting insights, both into the Western politics of the Iraqi occupation, and into what is happening on the ground in Iraq itself. It was interesting to observe how virtually each of the debaters strove to endow their claims with a measure of objectivity, by claiming the ‘authenticity’ of a visit to Iraq, a personal insight behind the headlines. But, of course, these tacit claims to objectivity-through-authenticity came across as intensely subjective, as each of those who had visited Iraq had wildly varying interpretations of events on the ground. These views varied from those of Shawcross, who was enraptured about the emergence of a glorious women’s republic of human rights and democracy, and those like Hollis, who made dark predictions about the potential for further instability.

Of the ‘field reports’ from Iraq, Jenkins’ was probably the most insightful and measured. Instead of the standard line of attacking the occupation for its brutality and illegitimacy, Jenkins took the novel tack of arguing for withdrawal from Iraq on the basis that there was no occupation in the first place. Jenkins argued that what is happening in Iraq is not an occupation but rather a ‘military squat’: massively fortified bases that occasionally mount devastating search-and-destroy missions, in between training Iraqi security forces. Eighty percent of the resources being poured into Iraq, according to Jenkins, are being poured into ‘force-protection’ - that is, to defend military forces that are not even exerting themselves to occupy the country in the first place. There is no ‘occupation’, in the sense of a ubiquitous armed presence that enforces an alien political rule, exercises authority, and maintains law and order. Judging by Jenkins’ insight, the chaos of Iraq represents not just the destructiveness of a military conflict, but also the fact of a ‘really existing civil society’, as non-political social institutions (tribes, militias and mosques), lauded by democratisation theorists, have been forced to usurp the place of a central state and a non-existent military occupation. With the success of the elections, it is an opportune moment to leave, according to Jenkins, particularly given that there is no purpose to an occupation that doesn’t exist in the first place.

The most striking aspect of the other side’s argument was the reliance on the Dick Cheney ‘our allies the Iraqis’ line of defence (the putdown that Cheney memorably used against John Edwards, the Democratic vice presidential candidate in the 2004 American elections, when Edwards poked fun at the pitiful raft of countries in America’s ‘coalition of the willing’). Taheri argued that it would simply be unconscionable to abandon the Iraqis in their brave struggle to establish democracy - a bizarre claim given that the Iraqis never called the coalition in to Iraq in the first place; and arguably only now (after the debate occurred), has Iraq got something approaching an elected government that could give such a request any semblance of legitimacy. This Cheney-inspired defence, frequently seen in both British and American justifications for the ‘squat’, reflects a peculiar but distinct coyness about the whole invasion. When all other justifications crumble away - WMD (no WMD found), fighting terror (the intervention has created more terror), the squatters fall back on the claims that they impute into a phantom Iraqi state, producing the strange sight of a dummy ventriloquising the ventriloquist. In the event, Taheri’s side overwhelmingly secured the audience’s vote against the motion, though judging by the arguments presented, it seemed that the audience was voting less for the ‘occupation’, so much as voting against the uncertainty of moving beyond the inertia of the status quo.

Philip Cunliffe is co-convenor of the Sovereignty And Its Discontents (SAID) work group .