Home > Quit Iraq, and quit fast. It’s that simple

Quit Iraq, and quit fast. It’s that simple

by Open-Publishing - Friday 24 September 2004
35 comments

Edito Wars and conflicts International


by Simon Jenkins "The Times"

TONY BLAIR has declared that Britain is now fighting a “new war” in Iraq. He did so on the anniversary of the Battle of Arnhem, an inauspicious precursor. Arnhem was a notorious “bridge too far”, a politico-military decision that led to defeat and the needless loss of British lives. But at Arnhem Britain knew what it was about. When Mr Blair calls on all “sensible and decent people” to support him in this new Iraq conflict we can only ask, to what end?

When I was in Baghdad last winter I could travel freely anywhere albeit in conditions of extreme insecurity. That is now out of the question. No soldier, journalist, aid worker, United Nations official, contractor, even middle-class Iraqi thought to be worth a ransom dares to move. Iraq may enjoy some liberties but they are near worthless in a state of anarchy. For Mr Blair to boast his invasion as leading to 18 months of progress is nonsense. Utilities are chaotic, aid cannot be distributed, guns are everywhere, electoral registers are non-existent. Most regional cities are beyond government control. Last week Baghdad’s central thoroughfare, Haifa Street, was said to be “in rebel hands”.

Such civil breakdown recalls Beirut in the 1980s and Mogadishu in 1993. Iraq’s nightmare can no longer be put down to Saddam Hussein or the neo-cons’ ubiquitous scapegoat of “al-Qaeda and world terrorism”. It emanates from the utter incompetence of the most lavish political and military establishment of all time, the Pentagon, with Britain as accomplice. That is the reality.

It is clear that nothing short of retirement will ever drive Mr Blair to admit that he has been party to one of the great errors of modern statesmanship. His dwindling band of admirers have retreated into mental dysfunction. Things are getting better, they burble, or rather they must get better. “Failure is not an option,” they chant, as if saying made it so. It is all a matter of will, of troops, of votes, of money, or of . . . any old rubbish will do. Just keep shooting and admit nothing.

The latest Big Lie is that the invasion of Iraq was a noble idea but the Americans screwed it up. The disclosure at the weekend of London’s doubts before the invasion suggests otherwise. Britain might indeed have even stayed aloof but for Mr Blair himself. It was he who subscribed to the neo-con “invasion-lite” option. He cannot escape blame, nor can those who bolstered him with polluted intelligence.

Either way, the claim that the goal of removing Saddam Hussein justified any means and any consequence is intellectually absurd. However many people died? However much Muslim hatred is provoked? However much terrorism is engendered round the world? The ending of communism would not have justified the nuclear bombing of Moscow, nor would the downfall of Castro have justified the carpet-bombing of Havana. I thought never to hear again the Vietnam slogan: “We must destroy the village to save the village.” Yet what else explains the nightly bombing of Fallujah, supported by Britain?

Yet Mr Blair’s declaration is helpful. It clears the decks. Weapons of mass destruction, mendacious dossiers and self-delusion can be left for the time being to history. We can face the present, such as 300 dead Iraqis last week and uncontrolled hostage-taking. Mr Blair’s new war looks like a civil war, sounds like a civil war and bombs like a civil war. That is what it is. Iraq is a nation grimly girding itself for a conflict to come, not one past. Baghdad is a battle zone. Not an iota of intelligence suggests that lawlessness is on the wane, quite the opposite.

Mr Blair will say that he is fighting for ordinary Iraqis. But all they can want of him now is security, which he cannot deliver. As long as British and American troops are in Iraq and the Allawi regime depends on them, Iraq is a magnet for every militia and suicide bomber in the Middle East. If Iraq is, as Mr Blair claims, a “crucible of world terror” the flame is the West’s military presence. Not for more than a decade has a Baghdad ruler bombed his own cities to suppress dissent. That is what Mr Allawi is now doing.

Mr Blair’s “new” war strategy is apparently clear. It is to re-establish central power in preparation forelections. It means building on Ayatollah al-Sistani’s authority in the south, relying on Kurdish good behaviour in the north, pacifying the Sunni triangle and “reducing” rebel enclaves in and round Baghdad. This is somehow to be achieved in part by air power, to limit American casualties and because Iraqi troops will not fight.

After pacification United Nations and local officials will be able to fan out across the country to draw up electoral registers and police the polling booths. Then, with a properly elected authority in Baghdad, no Iraqi will feel obliged to attack soldiers or policemen. Western troops can withdraw to barracks. It will not be like last July’s phoney “handover”. It will be real, and achieved in just four months.

This strategy simply beggars belief. It must rank in British Army history with Balaclava, Gallipoli and Arnhem. Yet it is the only strategy in sight. Such short-termism may be needed for Mr Blair’s domestic politics, but it is killing thousands of Iraqis without - we are assured - in any way diminishing the terrorist threat to Western capitals. This is not a new strategy at all.

Britain must get out of Iraq and fast. Its presence with America endangers everyone working to rebuild that country. It is an open secret that British soldiers and officials disagree with American tactics. The fact is that no plausible scenario for peace in Iraq can involve Western troops, however much the regime’s placemen fear their departure.

Dignity may require British forces to remain in Basra to January, hoping that some rudimentary face-saving vote can be engineered. Some interim policing deals may be struck with whichever warlord, sheikh or clerical militia holds sway in each settlement, as was done briefly in Fallujah, Najaf and Nasariya. This will not be a seemly colonial withdrawal, as from Ghana or Kenya. It will be a Vietnam, a Somalia or a Lebanon.

Mr Blair’s first Iraq war may have been a mistake, but that is not for now. It is his second war that matters. He should approach it with greater humility. Whatever freedom Britain has expensively granted Iraq has been granted. Whatever justice is claimed to have been done is done. The British have learnt that there is another patch of Earth which they cannot conquer and rule in peace.

The January elections may yet prove a festival of horror, as Iraq becomes a Mecca for every terrorist eager to give George Bush and Tony Blair a bloody nose, the blood being someone else’s. But the fall of Saddam was never going to be followed by democracy, only by civil war and probable partition. The British presence will only postpone that denouement and probably make it the more nasty. The Allawi regime may mean well but it is already imitating many of Saddam’s tactics, bombing hostile towns and imprisoning its enemies without trial. It is surely the taste of Iraq to come.

This new war can only be one of extraction, of discreet withdrawal. It is an exercise somehow to save Mr Blair’s premiership. It is a War of Blair’s Bacon. The attempt to portray it as a crusade against global terror is dishonest, contemptible for those who die as a result. Its shambolic outcome was always certain. The brave recourse now is to realism, to admit that a war which cannot be won should soonest be abandoned. Britain should leave Iraq in January, whatever a new American President decides.

simon.jenkins@thetimes.co.uk

http://mparent7777.blog-city.com/read/831121.htm

Forum posts

  • You shameful Chaberlain !!! Do you remember Hitler ??

    • What does Hitler have to do with leaving Iraq?

    • Fantastic article, irrefutable except by people who spell Chamberlain, Chaberlain. How can anyone be so stupid as to see the situation in Iraq in anyway resembling the situation just prior to WWII? To this poor fool I say just wait and see what a mess this will become. My god we are practically manufacturing terrorists in Iraq! I wonder if the poster is really baby killer Blair.

      Bill Owen
      Ottawa
      www.eyestir.com

    • It seems reading about history is non existent in England. The mother of our culture has forgotten the past. How many generations did it take to stop the Muslim attack on Europe? How many years did it take to stop Communism? How many years of violent fighting did it take to stop the fascist attempt to take over Europe?

      While American fights for your freedom again, your Tabloids enjoy their most profitable years. The French make rules against head scarves. The Germans hide behind their unemployment possibly caused by the influx of Muslims seeking work. The Russians continue to play with oil and a simple bribe can kill their citizens. Wake up England. The only terrorist action in the last 10 years has been Muslim inspired.

      While we fight for democracy and freedom and equality the remains of our origin of culture have stopped reading about truth and what it meant to fight for values. Instead they quibble over making up the news and who can make up the worst lie to sell. I believe CBS might have been trying to turn into a British tabloid.

      Let Cat Stevens go to Iraq where he should be welcomed with open arms until someone can figure out how to kidnap him for ransom. His head should look interesting on top of his torso. Why should he want to come to America, the most evil place on earth? He should be able to start a new career in Sadr City singing from some Minaret. Would the Iraqi’s welcome him with open arms? You expect America to do this.

      The world is at war again. As we have seen the ocean can no longer save us from the enemy. Only our friends and our families can do this. Our family started with our mother, England. We came to your assistance when you needed us. You came to our assistance when we needed you. We need to come to the assistance of humanity that needs both of us at this time, no matter what the tabloids try to tell us to do.

    • dont compare sadam with hitler... he was not supporting terrorism. white house acknowledges that he had NO CONNECTION with al quida and infact he opposed al quida terrorist during his regime! war in iraq can never be justified

    • This struggle is the FOURTH WAVE, after:

      Imperialism in World War I
      Fascism in World War II
      Communism in the Cold War

      and will last a generation.

    • Don’t compare Sadam with Hitler. Hitler was gassed by the English. Sadam only used gas on his own people.

    • So the 4th wave is upon us by locking out the female population in the enire Muslim world they seek a return to the 1st wave. Never gonna happen dude, or should I say dudette?

    • man man man!! please dont say "While we fight for democracy and freedom and equality" it is really funny, it really is

    • and america used the yellow gas on veitnam (i aint usin a spell checker)

    • yes it is!

    • Defoliant and gas are not exactly the same thing although I will say that long term effects of either are not good for life. You could say the same thing for beheading I presume and you could rationalize it as more humane because the suffering is probably not as long as the effect of gas or defoliants.

    • I suppose I should have used the term dictatorship and servitude and beheading and gassing your own population and the destruction of your own countrymen and women by blowing them to hell by being a suicide bomber. I wonder if you are a woman suicide bomber and go to heaven your reward will be that you will not be one of the 40 virgins that the man receives for his great deed. That sounds more jocular to me.

    • It is just as easy to manufacture a dragon is it now Bill? Your work is nice but your historical perception is not. True the US created this dragon by its own doing as it ignored this part of the world to fight the great Bear. Your enemy is my friend is not the philosophy to treasure in the long run. In the short term you may be correct, a mess. In the long term which many cannot see nor picture, the result will be the planting of the seed of democracy, or capitalism whichever you perceive it to be. And the end result of this planting we all know the outcome. It is way too powerful to ignore or overcome. The fundamentalist will go the way of the Bear and mankind will take another step forward. III

    • Yes, you are right. The Soviet Union also was fighting for peace. They were fighting for social justice, for freedom, for equal rights. When Red Army with "coalition of "willing" (Poland, Bulgaria, East Germany and Romania) invaded Czechoslovakia, TASS informed the world that they were "invited by Party and Government leaders".

      What is the difference between imperial power of USSR and US?

    • I strongly advise everybody to deeply study europe history in the 30’s. Some will better understand why we are living again that period again, and why those who where right too early where discredited.

      about the topic of the article, it would be best to let the iraqi decide:
      They mostly want the coalition to stay, or esle thair country will be lost and fall to the foreign terrorists who are mass slaughtering them and stop the painfull but steadly rebuilding of their country (whose medias NEVER inform)
      To them, what some call "resistance" here are only bloodthirsty terrorists.

      What i am saying is not coming from bush, but from the words of the iraqi themselves. I have been reading their blogs for months and they mostly show a different and interesting point of view:

      here is a few ones:

      www.iraqthemodel.blogspot.com
      www.healingiraq.com
      www.messopotamian.blogspot.com
      www.hammorabi.blogspot.com

      I confess i had the same opinion as most of the readers here, but i learnt that things where not always like they seems, or like some want us to see...

    • You mean backward...

    • You are really full of shit huh?

    • Saddam Hussien was our man supported by the U.S.A...CIA, the chemical weapons (gas) he used was supplied by the USA....our history is full of this kind of behind the scenes meddeling, installing a dictator, supplying him with weapons (look at Israel) and then when things get sour we manufacture a reason to take the military dictator down....do some reading you guys, you will find out that our government is behind so much of this kind of pushing weapons on other countries we sell 60% of the worlds weapons and unless some of these stockpiles are used business can not prosper.

      The intrem President in Iraq was in the CIA, and if you don’t believe that then you need to do some research. The people of this country don’t even know the history of this country, even people who live outside of this country know more about our behind the curtain power and resource grabbing.

    • Please don’t think that we all buy the propaganda that is being "allowed" to come out by so called Iraqi people on the internet....our government has started radio and t.v. propaganda stations over there and unless you are stupid you can figure out the fact that the internet is also a source for our government to spread lies coming from the professional liars in Bushco.

      The Pres. of Iraq was in Washington to praise Bush who gave him the job...he was in the CIA with daddy Bush, these people are all old "friends" and "business" partners. Don’t be stupid and buy all of this staged crap. This government is making fools out of the citizens of this country and a lot of you are eating this shit up like a cheese burger.

    • I see that you didn’t read the websites

      To the paranoids who see bush propaganda and plots everywhere when they see something they disagree. those websites are host by REAL iraqis. i have been reading them for months, and no american could have wrote iraqi life and culture with such details.
      And anyway, they are only interested in their own interest, and don’t systematically support the coalition, they can very critic too.
      But it is clear that many of them don’t like the anti-war very much...

      But after all, you are not really interested in the truth in itself, but only what you WANT to ear. this is pathetic.

    • And so you’re an Iraqi for Bush?

    • You are so brainwashed that you wouldn’t know the TRUTH if it hit you over the head.

    • Why wasn’t the blogspot of Riverbend included?

    • "they mostly want our coalition to stay" you have to be kidding, look at the few news reports that show actual Iraqi citizens when our tanker trucks, tanks, or humvees are crashed bombed and burned... they are cheering and have big smiles on their faces as any American would do if we were occupied by foreign armies and our only weapons were home made bombs and rocket launchers. The Iraqi people did not ask us to liberate them, they hate us and blame us for the destruction of their cities and homes and the deaths of their fellow citizens many who are children and innocent victums.

    • Did the web sites tell you that Allawi was and still is in the CIA? Because if they did not mention that then they are full of ignorant ill informed Bush supporters. I doubt that the average Iraqi citizen would support the CIA running their country. So it seems that you are either uninformed, or a big Bush fan.... or maybe you just like the idea of the CIA running the world for their own agenda and profit.

  • Why is it that we cannot see this as a religous issue, having lived and worked for many years in the Middle East I understand that Muslims have fundamentally different values and beliefs to general western ideollogies.

    While we continue to try and force the Muslims to take on Western values, they will continue to fight against us. This invasion is no better than the Christian Crusades in the early centuries.

    Why should they take us as their leaders, we don’t live there, they do!

    We have ruined their lives while we sit and watch it all on television, it makes me sick to the stomach.

    This is nothing more than a retaliation mission for George Bush, who still hasn’t figured out who dunnit?

    I agree with Simon Jenkins, GET OUT AND GET OUT NOW!!!

    Lee Hopkinson

  • Excellent piece by Mr Jenkins of The Times. Leading up to and during the initial stages of the invasion/bombing The Times and other mainstream media were jingoistic and full of crap about ’’liberation’’ and ’’WMD’s’’ -shame other Murdoch owned media outlets such as Fox and Sky don’t follow suit and allow the truth.

  • An excellent piece. I just hope that the government listens to the truth rather than Mr. Blair’s spin - AND SOON!

  • People generally get the government they deserve. Over the past year the Iraqis have demonstrated profoundly that they deserved Saddam Hussein.

    The invasion may have been well intentioned but the result is a disaster. Britain and America should withdraw immediately. Why sacrifice our blood to protect people who want us dead?

    Release Saddam from prison and bring our sons home.

  • This Iraq war has nothing to do with "terrorists"!!! It’s ALL about jews: oil and territory for them! No world "leaders" can do anything EXCEPT what his "handlers" tell him to do! They are ALL puppets, and the jews pull the strings. WARS are nothing more than a vehicle to kill-off the WHITE Race.

  • Arnhem was strategically correct but tactically wrong in the same way as Gallipoli. Both actions were correct but they simply failed in the execution, that’s what happens in war, you make a correct decision but get beaten on the battlefield. At Arnhem several factors mitigated aginst the Allies, British and Poles, must the most important was one that was recognised by the planners, namely, lightly armed paratroopers cannot match mobile heavy armour. It was never intended that the paratroopers should fight a battle against armour. The American and British armour was supposed to come down the road and take on the German armour, it was the German resistance on the road and the timid and slow commanders of the Allied armour which led to the paratroopers being liquidated. No armour equals no defence. It was not the paratroop drop in Operation Market Garden that was faulty, it was the delay in getting the armour to the bridge that led to failure. Ever since the Allies landed in France on D-day the defeat of Germany was only a matter of time. Montgomery and Eisenhower recognised this and on a balance of propabilties made a correct strategic decision to shorten the time when defeat would occur. Arnhem ranks with the ’Battle of the Bulge’ as being strategically correct but tactically wrong. Hitlers argument that Germany should attack and drive towards and take Antwerp cannot be faulted, his Generals knew he was right. The failure lay once agin in the execution of the plan. That’s war. As for Simon Jenkins simplistic rantings about getting out of Iraq I will confine myself to pointing out that we are fighting the terrorists in IRAQ, not Milton Keynes or Missippi. The whole point is that the turning point of WW2 was the allies landing in FRANCE. The allies have now landed in IRAQ. The London Times showed a photograph of two British Muslims now fighting the Americans in Fallujah. Hurray! That is where we want them to fight, not in Bradford. If the coaltion pulls out of Iraq then the two British terrorists will not have anyone to shoot at and will come back to Britain to foment trouble in the UK. Where would you rather have them pray and spray?
    America was far too lax before 9/11, they sneared at the British who checked handbags for IRA bombs and wallowed in a feeling of false security, some as Republicans had a sneaking admiration for the IRA Republicans fighting the old foe England. But hey they forgot the line, ’Just because it has not happened before doesn’t mean it never will’. Airline security was laughable, getting on American planes used to be their proud boast was like getting on a bus. ’You got a ticket? you can ride’. This at a time when Isreali airlines had been carrying air marshals for years. 9/11 awoke the giant just like Pearl Harbour, some people want to go back to sleep, it’s less worry.

    • They must have used clorox when they brainwashed you.....

    • just read these link plain simple facts this war should not be and all should get out
      http://www.presenceofmind.net/GSW/index.html

      the planners of this war are coldly pragmatic
      I believe this is a studied, strategic calculation, and I believe that is why Iraq is the target—because she is easy pickings compared to the other countries I named—Iran, North Korea, Pakistan and China
      This war was, by any objective account, one of the most one-sided, thorough ass-whippings ever administered in modern military history. The miracle of this outcome is recognized and celebrated in Israel every year, giving it the reverence it is due. The Arabs simply refer to it as "the setback". Talk about spin control.
      go to link read every thing the big brainwash

      Rotarian Kleptocracy
      http://www.presenceofmind.net/GSW/Naked.html
      betrayal
      http://www.presenceofmind.net/GSW/Naked.html
      God Bless Iraq from @—>—