Posted on 11/26/2006 7:52:49 PM PST by freedomdefender
It was the moment I should have twigged. It was the moment I should have realised that I had voted for the biggest British military fiasco since the Second World War. I was wandering around Baghdad, about 10 days after Iraq had been "liberated", and it seemed to me that the place was not entirely without hope.
OK, so the gunfire popped round every corner like popcorn on a stove, and civil society had broken down so badly that the looters were taking the very copper from the electricity cables in the streets. But I was able to stroll without a flak jacket and eat shoarma and chips in the restaurants.
With no protection except for Isaac, my interpreter, I went to the Iraqi foreign ministry, and found the place deserted. The windows were broken, and every piece of computer equipment had been looted. As I was staring at the fire-blackened walls a Humvee came through the gates. A pair of large GIs got out and asked me my business. I explained that I was representing the people of South Oxfordshire and Her Majesty's Daily Telegraph.
advertisement That didn't cut much ice. Then I noticed a figure begin to unpack his giraffe-like limbs from the shady interior of the Humvee. He was one of those quiet Americans that you sometimes meet in odd places.
He was grizzled and in his mid-50s and with a lantern jaw, and unlike every other US soldier I'd met he had neither his name nor his blood group stitched on his person. I grasped at once that this quiet American was no soldier. He had that Brahmin air, a bit Ivy League, a touch of JK Galbraith. Yes, folks, he was some kind of spook.
I remember how he walked slowly towards the shattered foreign ministry building, stroking his chin. Then he walked back towards us, and posed a remarkable question. "Have you, uh, seen anyone here?" he asked.
Nope, we said. All quiet here, we said. Quiet as the grave.
"Uhuh," he said, and started to get back in the Humvee. And then I blurted my own question: "But who are you?" I asked. "Oh, let's just say I work for the US government," he sighed. "I was just wondering if anyone was going to show up for work," he said. "That's all."
And that, of course, was the beginning of the disaster. Nobody came to work that day, or the next, or the one after that, because we failed to understand what our intervention would do to Iraqi society. We failed to anticipate that in taking out Saddam, we would also remove government and order and authority from Iraq.
We destroyed the Baathist state, without realising that nothing would supplant it. The result was that salaries went unpaid, electricity was not generated, sanitation was not provided, and all the disorder was gradually and expertly fomented until it was quite beyond our control.
And what we had failed to see in advance was that almost from the outset the Iraqis would blame us – and not just the insurgents – for every distress they experienced.
It is now commonplace for people like me, who supported the war, to say that we "did the right thing" but that it had mysteriously "turned out wrong". This is intellectually vacuous. It is like saying British strategy for July 1, 1916 was perfect, but let down by faulty execution. The thing was a disaster from the moment we invaded, and it wasn't poor old Rumsfeld's fault for failing to send in enough troops, or failing to do more "planning" for the post-war. No quantity of troops could have prevented this catastrophe; and the dreadful thing is that I think Saddam knew it.
A couple of years ago I had a chilling conversation with a very senior British general who was then intimately involved in our efforts in Iraq.
The trouble was, he said, that Saddam had thought it all through. He knew he hadn't a hope against the Pentagon, so he had a three-stage strategy. First he instructed his army not to put up much resistance to the Patton-like thrusts of the US army. Then, when Baghdad had fallen, he encouraged his soldiers to melt away to their homes and keep their weapons. The third stage, said this British general, was the one we had been embroiled in ever since: a guerrilla war, spiced with sectarian violence, to become gradually more intense until it became no longer possible for the allies to remain in Iraq.
And was he right in his analysis, this British general? Look at the place now. If Saddam had somehow managed to elude capture and stay in that hideyhole, people might now say he was on the verge of a sensational victory. Last time I was in Basra I was able to go for a run past the Shatt-al-Arab canal. You'd need a death-wish to do that today, and even in the massively fortified British compound the risk to life is so great that the Foreign Office has pulled most personnel back to the airport.
Say what?
fascinating how this journalist openly fantasizes about a Saddam victory.
My problem with this writer's despair is that it ignores the free elections that drew millions of Iraqis to the polls. The people wanted freedom.
Twigged = British slang for "caught on."
Thanks. didn't know that.
...maybe this so-called Journalist is hoping for a position @ (al) ABCNNBC_BS.....just a skip across the pond.
Here's a bit of slang for the author, "Sod off".
"Deutscheland, Deutscheland Uber Alles..."
Communist, Nazi, Islamofascist, Liberal, what's the diff?
"The trouble was, he said, that Saddam had thought it all through.First he instructed his army not to put up much resistance to the Patton-like thrusts of the US army...."
No, I think this is demonstrably false. I know the author wants to create some grand chess game out of it but Saddam was no military genius. His "concentric circles" strategy was laughable. Say what you want about mistakes on the US side or complain about Iran supplying troublemakers but I can say with as near perfect certitude that Saddam ISN'T in his death row jail cell thinking "Excellent! The plan is working perfectly!"
He may not think that it would be a bad thing for Saddam to be in power and to have nukes...but he probably wouldn't have liked it if Hitler had remained in power long enough for the Germans to develop atomic weapons.
The day was actually on the 23rd of May in 2003 when Paul Bremer dissolved the Iraqi military and security apparatus, dismissing 400,000 armed men to fend for themselves.
Did Saddam have his spider hole all picked out according to his grand plan? This is guerrilla warfare, suck it up!
Yes, indeed. Powell and the wimps in Foggy Bottom have a lot to answer for.
Every time I hear Bremer say that anyone who served in the old Iraqi Army was no different then a Nazi I have the urge to put my fist through the wall.
That idiot along with Wolfawitz decided to lay off hundreds of thousands of secular well trained Army officers and bureaucrats and then he crated a commission run by Chalabi and religious Shia that basically said if you are a Sunni you likely aren't getting work again in the Iraqi government.
OK. So "Powell and his wimps at Foggy Bottom have a lot to answer for."
Also glad that Rumsfeld is gone because he opposed a large build-up of troops, to bring the situation in hand.
But here's the question ---What do we do now?
NOT turn this thing into another Vietnam i hope.
But these guys {Iraq} don't seem to be ready to embrace democracy. They'd rather fight.
I wish i was wrong. But i don't seem to be.
I hope I am wrong.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.