The last British troops in southern Iraq have begun their withdrawal to the Basra airport, a process that has been going on for several weeks but that speeded up a little over a week ago. They may remain at the airport for several months before leaving for good -- I repeat, for good. I'm not quite sure why the further delay.
As the British slowly back out of the disgraced Coalition of the Willing, senior officers -- including the head of the British Army at the time of the invasion -- have begun to speak out about the absurd alliance they were forced into:
Transatlantic strains over Iraq continued at the weekend with an attack on the US from a second retired British general. Major General Tim Cross, the deputy head of the coalition's Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, denounced Washington's postwar policy as "fatally flawed". He insisted he had raised serious concerns about the country sliding into chaos with Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary at the time, but he had "dismissed" the warnings."The US had already convinced themselves that Iraq would emerge reasonably quickly as a stable democracy," he told the Sunday Mirror. "Anybody who tried to tell them anything that challenged that idea - they simply shut it out."
On Friday Major General Sir Mike Jackson, head of the army in 2003, called the American approach "intellectually bankrupt". Sir Mike also singled out Mr Rumsfeld for criticism, saying his claim that US forces "don't do nation-building" was "nonsensical".
If we still know too little about where Gordon Brown is headed, at least we know that he is not Tony Blair. Brown has already made it clear that he has little patience with the melodramatic rhetoric of the so-called war on terror, and he had the nerve to do that during a visit to Camp David. He is more comfortable with the stolid and steady language of serious criminal investigation, which has proved, not incidentally, the only effective way to stop terrorists in their tracks before they strike or to track them down afterwards.
It is good that the British are going. They have been part of an immense historical tragedy, and even their leaving of Iraq is tragic in the classical sense. So many lives lost, so many. So pointless.
Me, I just want to cry.
You've probably seen this already, skdadl, but here is the Daily Telegraph piece on Sir Mike. The paper is promising to serialize his autobiography in the weeks ahead. Here's a disappointing hunk from today's DT summary (pg.3):
Oy. I just found this on Youtube: the US is already gearing up to use Basra as an excuse to avoid withdrawal of their own forces. This video is dated Aug 24, 2007 (CNN Situation Room, Wolf Blitzer speaking with Baghdad correspondent Michael Ware).
I'm off to pull out the rest of my hair now :(
For what ever reason, this is very good news. Britain supplied some kind of legitimacy to an adventure that any country that received some kind of American foreign aid could not.
I'm sure the Americans are already heading for Basra -- if I could remember where I read the most recent bluster on that score, I'd link to it, and I'm sure we'll find lots tomorrow.
Whatever they try will be futile, but when has that ever stopped them? I know, I know.
This is rich. The Brits are leaving the palace in Basra while the Afghans are celebrating the date (annual)of the last time the Brits left the middle east (Afghanistan) about 66 years ago. Alas the lion does crawl away, but it always leaves a tale. And this time the question is, what about the oil, since it seems the Government, well, the tiny cluster of cast offs in Baghdad, can't get the deal signed. Since the Americans have given the Brits absolutely nothing for their pains so far, one expected they would only actually leave when the oil deal was done and they had their little piece. Not even that, you say. Pity.
I suspect the more reality-based Brits are concluding that the chances in the medium term of the US maintaining a client government that will actually give them control of the oil has shrunk to near-invisible stature (and when they go after Iran that tiny remnant vision will implode), so they could hang in until the bitter end and if anything it would *worsen* their chances of a piece of the oil pie.
Plus, USian governments, while they never seem to forget a slight, always seem curiously absent-minded when it comes to remembering any deals to share largesse. So if you're a small country and you cave to their threats, you really have dodged whatever bad thing they would have done to you (although in the long term your close association with them may do more harm than their sanctions would've), but if you're a bigger country and you listen to their promises, chances are you'll be out of luck. They'll remember that they're sure you just went along because you loved freedom.
The Americans do have one remaining potential method of maintaining control: Partition the country, or let it partition itself, and back the Kurds against all comers in return for oil concessions. The Kurds are actually sitting on most of the oil, aren't they? And the Kurds don't actually hate the Americans much. Yet. And if the Americans are really going after Iran, which it seems more and more they are, they could try to break off the Kurdish chunk of Iran and make Kurdistan from the Kurdish bits of Iran and Iraq while the Turks scream bloody murder. They could talk loftily about freeing the Kurds from Iranian oppression. There are many potential problems with this. For instance, there aren't many Kurds and they have no support anywhere in the region and AFAIK no coastline at all let alone a port, and so they'd be hard to support effectively. Even the Turks would probably turn against the US if they started backing the Kurds too hard. So the logistics would be horrible. But it's still closer to viable than any other plan I can imagine at this point.
PLG, that is a wickedly good analysis. We could use you in foreign affairs.
The Kurds have only to retreat into their mountain fastness - as I shall do when the jarheads come looking for our oil!
'Grass'
How soon we forget. Tony Blair (now working on an Israeli-Palestinian peace)gave the finger to the unions, moved Labour to the centre and won three general elections with large majorities. Gordon Brown's been in for a few weeks. Granted he's doing well but part of the reason for that is that Cameron is so week. Let's see how Gordon does in the general election (late this fall) before put him in Tony Blair's league.
Trust me, Neil: I have forgotten very little about Tony Blair, and I would really have to be in a mean mood to put anyone else in his league.