Big Sticks and Small Carrots

The Sunday Telegraph asks a senior British Army officer in Iraq to describe victory in Basra.

We would go down there, dressed as Robocop, shooting at people if they shot at us, and innocent people were getting hurt,” he said. “We don’t speak Arabic to explain and our translators were too scared to work for us any more. What benefit were we bringing to these people?

Break out the bunting.

There are, of course, very good reasons why Iraqi translators are too scared to work with British forces. Whatever your views on the war, the campaign to save Iraqi ex-employees of HMG is surely worthy of support.

The Telegraph goes on to report that:

Rather than fight on, they [UK Forces] have struck a deal – or accommodation, as they describe it – with the Shia militias that dominate the city, promising to stay out in return for assurances that they will not be attacked. Since withdrawing, the British have not set foot in the city and even have to ask for permission if they want to skirt the edges to get to the Iranian border on the other side…

With no presence in the city, British forces are hard pushed to keep abreast of what is going on. They say they get their information from local newspapers and from the Iraqi army, although one battalion of that force is isolated inside the city and the other battalion is in training outside. The British have already encountered much the same problem in the neighbouring Maysan province to the north east, which they handed over in April.

And that explains why the government still thinks there’s a possibility that they can spin their way out of this bloody shambles. If an Iraqi ex-employee of HMG is shot in the back of the head and there are no British troops around to hear the gunshot, does it make a sound? The government thinks not.

The working soldiers of the British army are not responsible for this mess; they were asked to perform an essentially impossible task.

John Ware’s documentary “No Plan, No Peace” did raise the question as to why senior military figures didn’t make greater efforts to stop their men being sent into such a situation. It is clear that many were well aware of the US and British governments’ failure to address post-war planning and knew that it’d be by far the hardest aspect of the invasion.

You’d like to think that resignations would have been the order of the day but it didn’t happen. Asked to prioritise the value of their soldiers versus their career, I don’t remember a single senior military figure opting for the squadies. Now, about five years after it might have made a difference, general Sir Mike Jackson has courageously decided to speak out by writing a book. What class…

Ware’s documentary also included interviews with some of the academics who were belatedly brought in to advise Blair on Iraq in the run up to war. The picture which emerged was entirely consistent with similar interviews for a Peter Oborne documentary for Channel 4. The academics briefed Blair on the enormous complexity and numerous dangers which would exist in post-Saddam Iraq. Blair listened politely but was more interested in asking the academics whether they agreed that Saddam was evil.

At this point (January 2003 or there about), it seems that any critical faculties Blair might once have had had become overwhelmed by his own spin. The academics were not supportive of the war because they could see that the US and UK government’s were totally unprepared for what would come after. Blair apparently took this to mean that they were apologists for Saddam.  Instead of giving value to their accurate and informed advice, he demanded that they participate in a Will-You-Condemn-A-Thon. At such a level was policy made and expert advice dismissed.

One of the academics, Dr Tony Dodge I think, rightly pointed out that Blair’s attitude was criminally negligent. Today, the Iraqi people are paying the price for that negligence with their own blood.

Blair, however, has never been held to account for his disastrous inability and/or refusal to understand the consequences of what he was proposing. That simply is not acceptable in a supposedly democratic country.

As a footnote, the documentary also highlighted the reason why those MPs from other parties who voted for the war cannot be allowed to avoid accepting their own responsibility. I’m looking at you Dave.

On the day of the vote, evidence which made it obvious that the invasion was going to lead to disaster was available to me, an average International Relations graduate with a TV, a radio and an internet connection. Are we really being asked to believe that this evidence wasn’t available to members of Her Majesty’s official opposition?