Blair’s foreign policy blown apart

As usual, this great writer puts it exactly right:

Ian Bell in The Herald, Saturday 14 October, 2006

"General Sir Richard Dannatt, chief of the general staff, spent a good deal of time yesterday trying to find a reverse gear for the tank he had just parked on Tony Blair's lawn.
Had the general said that British troops should be withdrawn from Iraq "sometime soon"? Had he said that our presence "exacerbates the security problems"? Had he called pre-war planning for the aftermath of occupation "poor", the hopes for Iraqi democracy "naive", suggested that we should "aim for a lower ambition", and accepted that Iraqi consent for our activities, if any, "has largely turned to intolerance"?
Yes, he had. Requesting a better grasp of context, and qualifying his remarks furiously, the general was soon re-learning an old military lesson: once launched, a barrage stays launched. Direct hits on Blair's foreign policy had been scored.
Yesterday morning, nevertheless, Dannatt wanted the world to know that withdrawal "soon" would involve familiar platitudes. It meant a pull-out after the job was done, not before Iraq's elected government could attend to its own security, and certainly not if there was a risk of handing a victory to the insurgency.
Still, the general, having enjoyed the top job only since August, was unable to gainsay his own words in the Daily Mail. We had not been "welcomed by being invited into a country", namely Iraq. As Dannatt put it: "Let's face it, the military campaign we fought in 2003 effectively kicked the door in."
Nor had things gone well since: "The hope that we might be able to get out of Iraq in 12, 18, 24 months after the initial start … has proved fallacious. Now hostile elements have got a hold it has made our life much more difficult in Baghdad and Basra."
Anyone can quibble over language, but it is safe to say that these are not the words Downing Street and the White House would have chosen. The Pentagon's plans for a "draw-down" of forces in Iraq are on hold, for an unspecified period. George Bush has spoken of an occupation lasting for perhaps another decade. Blair, addressing the Labour Party conference, refused to set a date for withdrawal. Such is the real context of the general's remarks.
It has other aspects. One is that Britain's most senior army officer believes he has inherited a cock-up. Secondly – and this has been the military chatter recently – Dannatt and his brother officers believe the army can "do Afghanistan", a mission he holds to be legitimate, but not when 7200 troops are stuck in Iraq. Thirdly, Blair is now so politically infirm, so bereft of authority, the chief of the general staff believes he can rebel publicly and defy all constitutional practice.
The Bush White House will not be pleased. Britain's involvement in Iraq has been a necessary if not sufficient condition for America's actions. Our troops are useful, not essential, but the symbolism they provide performs the opposite function. Now the pre-eminent voice among our military decides to break ranks, as several of his juniors have already done. With Blair unable to enforce his will – did Dannatt clear his remarks with Downing Street? – Britain begins to seem unreliable.
In one sense, nevertheless, Bush and the general are privy to the same knowledge. The Pentagon manages its dissent differently, but for more than a year, as Dannatt well knows, the message has been the same: where is the exit strategy? The practice in the US is for retired generals to speak as proxies for those still serving. They convey the frontline grumbling and the fears. With Bush predicting a conflict that will endure long beyond the end of his presidency, the complaints are growing louder.
At this point it is customary, at least for this writer, to challenge all those who championed the war. Who was right, we could ask, and who wrong? Will all those who refused to see this coming now explain themselves? Fat chance. That, though, is almost beside the point. One consensus holds between Blair, Bush and the generals. It depends on a single argument with which any of us who opposed the war must deal: what now?
It would be satisfying, no doubt, to hear president and prime minister own up to error and malign intent, but not helpful. They caused the hellish problem, but how is the problem to be solved? If withdrawal means leaving Iraq to death squads, al Qaeda, to civil war, chaos, Balkanisation and the ministrations of Iran and Syria, do we not compound the crime? Blair takes refuge in a version of that question almost weekly.
Menzies Campbell, the Liberal leader, has called for a United Nations protectorate. Nice idea. But who will provide the troops? Not Britain and the US, obviously. Not the European nations who opposed the Iraq adventure in the first place, and whose commitment in Lebanon and Afghanistan has been half-hearted. Not, given a tangle of regional rivalries, the Arab world. There is no UN force ready to save the day.
The answer to Blair's question is brutal, but unavoidable. We should get out now and accept what follows. The longer we stay, the worse things become. Iraq, like the former Yugoslavia, is inherently unstable and will not be held together by force. The Kurds seem more than capable of defending themselves. Shia and Sunni will not be reconciled, meanwhile, thanks to the people for whom – the triumph of the Bush-Blair war – they share a common hatred.
According to the UN, torture in Iraq is now more widespread than in the worst days of Saddam: what hope does that yield? According to researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, 655,000 Iraqis have died since the invasion: Bush says the figure is "not credible".
Cluster studies in the field of medical statistics are less reliable than cluster bombs, perhaps. They might sound too close to guesswork. How can a study of 12,801 people, even when selected randomly from across the country, produce a figure of 655,000?
One answer: the researchers requested death certificates. In 92% of cases, these were provided. Given that sort of documentation, it is the scepticism towards the extrapolation that is "not credible". Let's agree, nevertheless, to settle for half the Johns Hopkins figure, or even half again: that's almost 164,000 souls whose futures our leaders failed to secure. So fighting on remains an imperative?
Things might have been otherwise. The single interesting claim in David Blunkett's recently-serialised, entirely self-pitying memoirs is that Blair was ready to sack Gordon Brown in 2003 if the chancellor failed to support the war. Brown, says the former home secretary, decided to back down for the sake of his job.
Consider, if the claim is true, what might have been. What if Brown had kept his courage and chosen to resign? How many among a cowed cabinet might have seized the moment and followed? Could Blair have survived to legitimise the Bush invasion plan? If not, could the plan have then proceeded? I doubt it.
Groucho Marx used to call military intelligence a contradiction in terms, but let's not be harsh on General Dannatt. He has let slip one truth. Here's another: 655,000 Iraqis, and counting."