What Iraq can do to otherwise sane people..... Simon Jenkins has consistently refused to see anything but disaster there, and his latest effort provides more of the same:
The coalition skulks out of Iraq as the Americans did out of Vietnam, in armoured helicopters, while another three-hour power cut leaves Baghdad sweltering and fearful. Pentagon apologists have jeered: “Why not celebrate the good things in free and stable Iraq?” The answer is now clear. If Iraq were free and stable, nothing would have kept a certain president and a certain prime minister from flying down from Istanbul today to say so. They did not dare.The coalition’s final decision, to get out early, was probably its shrewdest. Security in Iraq was worsening and nothing but corpses were to be gained by staying. True, 160,000 troops remain but they are increasingly confined to base. With the US presidential election approaching, the bodybags are talking. The loss of 40 Marines in the May retreat from Fallujah was the last straw. A land which a conqueror cannot hold, said Clausewitz, has not been conquered. Discretion is indeed the better part of valour.
Towns such as Najaf, Karbala, Ramadi and Fallujah, and Sadr City in Baghdad are now in the hands of gangsters and militias. The Kurdish region is beyond Baghdad’s aegis. More important, so are the transport network, the highways and airports. Contractors have recently had to stop most infrastructure work, leading to a return of power cuts and oil losses. The stuffing has gone out of this intervention. Everyone, not just the Iraqis, wants “foreign troops out”.
Anyone recognise this picture? The troops increasingly confined to base...the Kurdish region beyong Baghdad's aegis. What is he talking about?
I have never subscribed to the Left’s view that the Iraq invasion was an act of US imperialism or commercial conquest. Washington’s new war-memoir industry depicts it rather as an extension of Afghanistan in revenge for 9/11, with added neocon twirly bits such as de-Baathification. If Iraq had been about oil or democracy, Mr Bush would not have left it to Mr Rumsfeld. If it had been about toppling dictators, he would not be courting the odious Colonel Gaddafi or funding the tyrant of Uzbekistan. Liberating Iraq was meant to be a short-term, self-financing populist gesture. As in Afghanistan, America would soon cut and run, with Britain trotting behind. At this point, the grammar of the Iraq debate goes haywire. Verbs slide from present and future to past exonerative and future aspirational. We are told that yes, everyone knows mistakes were made . . . (mistakes are always intransitive). We should set aside the past . . . what Baghdad now needs is . . . what all good people must hope is . . .We can all do hope. It is dead easy. I can hope that that nice, tough Iyad Allawi gains swift control of his country. I can hope his police assert control over the gangsters now ruling his streets. I can hope the Kurds accept rule from suspect Baghdad. I can hope peaceful elections take place next year “as planned”. I can even hope that Dr Allawi one day dies safe in his bed.
De-Baathification one of the "added neocon twirly bits"?
Well, why go on? But I wish he'd been honest enough to admit what he really wants, instead of all that guff about hoping for Allawi to gain swift control, or for peaceful elections to take place next year. It's clear enough that what he really hopes for is the exact opposite. He hopes it all goes horribly wrong, lots of people get killed, and he can say, "I told you it would end in tears."
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