Posted on 03/28/2008 12:22:04 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
The fighting that has erupted in Basra should come as no surprise to anyone who has followed the course of the war in Iraq. While the US has spent the last year increasing force size in western Iraq and more aggressively challenging militias in Baghdad, the British have become more passive in Basra and have significantly reduced their footprint to one-tenth of their original commitment. That has made them almost invisible in the south, and since the Iraqi Army did not have a large enough presence there either, the British reduction allowed competing Shi’ite militias to take control of the area.
Now that the Iraqi government has enough troops, they have tried to make their writ run in Basra — and as the Times of London notes, that highlights the failure of the British in that area:
British forces, who can probably cobble together an armoured battle group of a few hundred soldiers, may well be asked to intervene should the Iraqi offensive fail. If that happens, any hope of the withdrawal promised by Gordon Brown last year of another 1,500 British troops this spring will have to be shelved until Basra can be stabilised.
It may even be necessary to reinforce the British contingent with more combat troops, something that the Ministry of Defence can ill afford as it prepares for the fighting season in Afghanistan.
The only other option would be for Britain to admit finally that it has lost the fight in southern Iraq. That would mean an ignominious withdrawal and handing over control of Basra to the Americans, who grudgingly would have to take over responsibility for the south. As American officers and officials have privately made clear, much of today’s problems in Basra can be traced back to Britain’s failure to commit the forces necessary to control Basra and southern Iraq in general.
Whereas President Bush’s “surge” tactic of sending 30,000 reinforcements to central Iraq has succeeded in bringing down the level of violence in Baghdad and Anbar province, the Americans believe that the gradual withdrawal of British troops from the south has had the opposite effect, a point that Mr al-Maliki and his soldiers are discovering to their cost on the streets of Basra today.
The British took the wrong tack in the south, and the results have been plain for at least two years. Instead of remaining in control of Basra and keeping order until Iraq could build their new security forces, their reduced footprint created a vacuum for order that the militias were only too happy to fill. The Sadr Mahdi Army and the Badr Brigades started seizing control of the streets in 2004, when the British reduced their forces to 8600 troops, and they have only strengthened their grip while the British retreated further. The Washington Post noted the problem last summer, as the surge began showing signs of ending the sectarian strife everywhere else.
The fighting in Basra now was inevitable at some point. Baghdad couldn’t allow a major city like Basra to operate outside its control forever. Instead of an orderly transition from Coalition to Iraqi security control, as is happening in the West, the Maliki government now has to take Basra by force — while the rump of British power sits in its bases, unable to contribute at all to security any longer. Whether Maliki decided to do this next week or next year, the fight in Basra had to happen at some point in order to apply the rule of law throughout Iraq.
That’s why this isn’t a collapse of the American surge, but a demonstration of the folly of premature withdrawal. The lack of fortitude on Iraq left a vacuum that created bigger problems and more serious fighting than tenacity did. Had we listened to the war’s critics in 2005 and 2006, gangsters would have swallowed the entirety of Iraq, and we would have a second Somalia in southwest Asia.
It wasn't that long ago that some British officers felt compelled to criticize the US approach and boast of their own superior skills in dealing with insurgency.
I remember at the start of the Iraq Liberation. they kept on lecturing us on how we weren't handling things the right way.
Iraqi militia success means Britain must fight – or admit failure ( Times of London Headline)
Yeah I remember the bold “We wear berets and are popular, you Americans wear helmets and frighten little kids”-smugness:
Wow - the Times of London should conduct a tutorial for the Democrats in Washington. Their strategy is to repeat the British failure. Unfortunately, the Republicans and Bush are not savvy enough to use this new testimonial in support of their policies, and the Obama/Clinton/Reid/Pelosi rants will rule the media.
That said, the British failure should be placed on their government and their senior officers. The average Tommy in the trenches in Iraq and up in Afghanistan, along with the Aussies and Canadians, are doing outstanding and courageous work in cleaning out the Islamist scum in spite of their governments' restrictions. The Canadians especially have been doing some hard slogging, and are suffering significant casualties. They are all outstanding allies.
Ironically, they all speak English.
My tagline was apt then - and now.
I remember the british soldiers deriding ours as “wearing so much armor as to look like a mutant ninja turtle”
It is quite surprising to see such astute honesty coming from the London Times in this day and age, instead of socialist sniveling loserism.
I certainly agree with that.
It transpired several years later that the Brits were poorly equipped and didn’t have the armor they very much needed for Iraq. British soldiers were needlessly killed or injured as a result, and the British public knows it.
The Brits had orders to stay in their camp..keep their heads down and don’t return any fire.
They used their Phalanx to worn of incoming..but did not use it to shoot at incoming.
Their only strategy was to stay alive and leave as soon as possible.
They moved their base to the airport..to reduce their exposure.
We had a friend in Basra last year..US Special Forces..observed all this.
more evidence.
When the going gets tough, the limeys get going.
They’ll be running away from Afghanistan in the next year too.
Yeah, because that worked out so well for them didn’t it ?
I’ve been saying for years how they are bad allies, and only now are people beginning to see it.
If we’d have told them to go running back to their europeon buddies back in 2003 we’d have been in Iraq months earlier, instead of wasting time with the limp wristed UN. We could have assigned Basra to some more reliable ally, or even better our own troops.
Instead the sniveling brits have left us with another mess to fix.
Axlrose: Yawn.
“I’ve been saying for years how they are bad allies, and only now are people beginning to see it.”
You’ve been saying it for years because you are an anti-British bigot. You are obsessed with the UK. The Brits aren’t running anywhere. They are increasing troop numbers in Afghanistan (part of the reason for the draw-down in Iraq) and are keeping around 4000 troops in Iraq until at least the end of the year. You mention a ‘more reliable ally’. Who exactly would that be? Everyone else in the Coalition of the Willing is leaving or has left. The UK are the only ally of the US still serving on the frontlines of both threatres in the War on Terror, despite having suffered far higher levels of casualties there than any other US ally. The hundreds of killed and wounded UK troops in Iraq alone have spared the sacrifice of American blood in that Southern Region since 2003.
“Instead the sniveling brits have left us with another mess to fix.” Quite frankly, that is a digusting comment to make. If it were made about US forces in Iraq I believe the poster would be banned from this site very quickly (quite rightly so). You should feel ashamed of slandering British soldiers (many of whom have been wounded and killed) from behind your computer screen.
Thanks for the link. This is based on the opinion piece in the Times of London. I fully appreciate the opinion/argument made, but disagree with it. In a similar way, I have disagreed with UK and US editorial pieces calling for complete withdrawl from Iraq.
“When the going gets tough, the limeys get going.”
Funny: I can think of lots of examples of the US government doing this: (Vietnam, Somalia, Beirut, Iran), but not the UK.
Please enlighten me as to where the UK ‘got going’ in recent decades? The UK will likely have a presence in Iraq until the US leaves and is increasing its Afghanistan committment: “UK ‘in Afghanistan for decades’” http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6220856.stm
England was the peacekeeper in the Gulf region for a long time, but had to cut back and eventually pulled out altogether. The USA is doing that job now, and the alternative is Russia. Tribal warfare continued all along and apparently still continues and probably will continue when the oil is gone and they are back to tents and camels.
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