Pretty Much Of A Disaster

I was very surprised to hear that Mr. Blair had characterized the war in Iraq as a "disaster".

During an interview with David Frost on the Al Jazeera English channel, Mr. Frost put it to Mr. Blair that events in Iraq had been "pretty much of a disaster".

Mr. Blair replied: "It has, but you see what I say to people is why is it difficult in Iraq?

"It's not difficult because of some accident in planning, it's difficult because there's a deliberate strategy - al-Qaeda with Sunni insurgents on one hand, Iranian-backed elements with Shia militias on the other - to create a situation in which the will of the majority for peace is displaced by the will of the minority for war."

Mr. Blair puts forward a profound argument, one worthy of Mr. Bush himself, for the chaotic state of affairs in Iraq. The enemies, because there are more than one, won't stop fighting. The invasion was a great success, Saddam was overthrown, and that should have been the end of it. Everyone should have gone quietly home and celebrated their liberation. But then the nasty sectarian militias and those rotten insurgents with their foreign fighters emerged from the ruins of the collapsed Iraqi state and continued to fight. Not only do they fight each other with great enthusiasm, they all fight the invaders as well.

But the greatest violence done to the Iraqi people comes not from the Western troops that occupy the country, but from the sectarian fighters that are engaged in a daily ritual of killings and revenge.

"The problem is that every time there is a sensational event, that starts the whole sectarian cycle again." Said Major General William B. Caldwell IV, Chief spokesman for the American command in Iraq. "If we could stop the cyclical nature of this in Baghdad, we could really change the dynamics here."

Now one might argue that the post-Saddam situation was not properly assessed by the planners of the invasion and that the sectarian and ethnic divisions in Iraq were completely ignored. It would seem that the intelligence that justified the war was not only faulty it was incomplete to the extreme.

But surely Mr. Blair, head of a British government which has many years experience of sectarian violence and political discord, would be able to extrapolate the possibilities of the post-Saddam Iraq. Northern Ireland, with it's own religious and political divisions, has long tormented and troubled the British government. The many years of sectarian violence, including revenge killings and gross atrocities, are still a sore point, and have yet to be completely resolved. Even now, all these years since the violence has all but ended in Northern Ireland, there is still little or no agreement from both sides of the sectarian divide on power sharing and self rule.

What makes Mr. Blair so bold as to think that he might be able to calm the troubled waters of the Tigres, establish a peaceful and long-lasting government of compromise, and bring the war in Iraq to a successful and amicable end, when even his own house remains divided?


One would like to believe that Mr. Blair would have offered his government's many years of experience to Mr. Bush, and by doing so have tempered the fires that Mr. Bush was intent on fueling. Bush's lack of international experience, and complete ignorance of diplomatic technique, would probably have benefited from Britain's long experience in such matters. But Mr. Blair just cuddled up with Mr. Bush and the madmen in the Pentagon and comforted himself inside the "special relationship" that is the myth of Anglo-American politics. Shame, shame, shame.

Now he is reduced to blaming the "disaster" of the Iraq war on the fact they (the other guys) just won't stop fighting and killing.



The Oxford Research Group, a British think-tank, published a report this week stating that the "war on terror" will last for 30 years. It also stated that recent political changes in America would make little difference to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The report goes on to say that the fundamental mistake was to rid Iraq of Saddam Hussein's regime by force. This single action turned out to be a gift to groups like Al Qaeda. But, it goes on to say, now we can't pull out or this would allow extremism to operate without restraint...and we would lose control of Middle-East oil.

Pretty much of a disaster? I think so.