in the face of a fierce enemy.
PM Brown is such a tough guy.
Posted on 07/28/2007 11:08:20 PM PDT by bruinbirdman
A SENIOR Downing Street aide has sounded out Washington on the possibility of an early British military withdrawal from Iraq.
Simon McDonald, the prime minister’s chief foreign policy adviser, left the impression that he was “doing the groundwork” for Gordon Brown, according to one of those he consulted.
Brown, who arrives at Camp David in Maryland today to meet President George W Bush, said yesterday that “the relationship with the United States is our single most important bilateral relationship”.
Downing Street remains emphatic that he will not unveil a plan to withdraw British troops, who are due to remain in southern Iraq until the Iraqi army is deemed capable of maintaining security. A spokesman said there had been no change in the government's position.
Behind the scenes, however, American officials are picking up what they believe are signals that a change of British policy on Iraq is imminent.
McDonald, a senior diplomat who formerly ran the Iraq desk at the Foreign Office, was in Washington this month to prepare for the summit. He asked a select group of US foreign policy experts what they believed the effect would be of a British pull-out from Iraq.
“The general feeling was that he was doing the groundwork for a Brown conversation,” said a source. Most of the experts felt it was a question of when, not if, Britain would leave.
“The view is Britain feels it can’t fight two wars, and Afghanistan is more worth fighting for,” added the source. Yesterday a British soldier was killed during a rocket attack in Afghanistan, bringing to 67 the number of British fatalities there.
McDonald’s questions, coming in the wake of remarks by Douglas Alexander, the international development secretary, about the use of American power, and the appointment of Lord Malloch-Brown, a critic of US policy, as a Foreign Office minister, were seen by some in Washington as another signal that Brown is distancing himself from Iraq.
Malloch-Brown, in particular, arouses strong emotions. Critics within the Bush administration have long viewed the former UN deputy secretary-general with suspicion and were annoyed when he said last month Britain and America would no longer be “joined at the hip”.
A former UN official, Artjon Shkurtaj, has now accused him of turning a blind eye to corruption and mismanagement at the United Nations programme he ran for six years.
Shkurtaj lost his job after claiming that rules designed to prevent corruption were being breached in the North Korean offices of the UN Development Programme. Some UN insiders have, however, accused Shkurtaj of being an American “stooge”, manipulated by Washington to embarrass Malloch-Brown.
Henry Kissinger, the former US secretary of state, has warned British ministers to beware of distancing themselves from America.
“Ostentatious dissociation from the US just sets up a quarrel,” he said in an interview with The Sunday Times.
He added that Brown had qualities that could be “very helpful” to the president in resolving the Iraq problem. “Gordon Brown is an extremely thoughtful person with a more intellectual approach than Tony Blair,” said Kissinger. “President Bush has not invited him to Camp David to lecture him on how Britain can fit in with America’s wishes. He will listen to him with an open mind.”
Brown visited Iraq last month to discuss the situation there with Lieutenant-General Graeme Lamb, the coalition deputy commander and overall UK commander, and Major-General Jonathan Shaw, the commander in the south.
Army chiefs make no secret of their desire to withdraw. British troops are under virtual siege in Basra with four servicemen killed in the past two weeks by mortar or rocket attacks on their two bases. Most are in tents with no overhead protection.
Shaw has drawn up a proposal - backed by Lamb - under which the bulk of the British troops could be withdrawn by the end of the year or early next year, leaving only small training teams. They are due to withdraw to a single base at Basra airport by the end of this month.
Bob Ainsworth, the armed forces minister, told MPs last week that the local Iraqi military commander believed his force was “approaching the point” where it could take over responsibility.
“There is hope among our people out there at every level that we are approaching the situation where that can be done. But we have got to talk to our allies and to the Iraqi government about that. That cannot be a unilateral decision on our part,” he said.
In contrast with the famous “Colgate summit” - at which Bush told the press he and Blair shared the same brand of toothpaste - no walkabouts or matey photo-opportunities are expected when the president meets the new prime minister.
“President Bush and prime minister Brown don’t need a photo-opportunity of the two of them heading off into the sunset holding hands to prove that the US-UK relationship is as strong as ever,” a British official said.
Brown will have a one-to-one dinner with Bush tonight and they will meet again without aides for breakfast tomorrow.
A Whitehall source said: “It will be more businesslike now, with less emphasis on the meeting of personal visions you had with Bush and Blair.”
Excuse me, but I am not fearful of the English leaving
Iraq. The Times can shove this where Brown...
Sorry, the English want to be liberal wooses.
Well, when you come right down to it, Britain’s help in Iraq was really more valuable for political and morale purposes than for any practical reasons.
Tony Blair may basically be a socialist, but he was brave and ruined his political career by being an ally to us as he did. I appreciate it. But anyone that thinks that Gordon Brown is going to pay any more than ‘lip service’ to alliance to the USA is smoking or ingesting something very potent.
The only thing that surprises me is that his first official act wasn’t to pull all of Britain’s troops home and surrender to to ‘Mohamed’.
Interesting comment.
yitbos
Funnily enough, later on in The Times was a featured article talking about how the US was planning to stage its withdrawal from Iraq. Britain isn’t going to withdraw any time soon and will be in Iraq most likely until the US pulls out. Brown himself has stated that he won’t put a timetable on British troops to withdraw from Iraq. Furthermore, Iraq is less controversial in the UK at present than in the US (where Congress is fighting the Bush administration). Both the main political parties in the UK have said that British troops need to stay in Iraq until the job is done. Maybe your Democrats should take note.
Maybe you should post a picture of the entire US unit that refused to go on convoy duty in Iraq a couple of years ago.
The US is facing far more domestic political opposition to Iraq than that faced by Brown in the UK, where consensus says that we must fulfill our obligations to the Iraqi people. Brown himself has ruled out a timetable for UK troops to be withdrawn.
- Brown was all set to announce a British pull out from Iraq as a big, new broom in office popularity move, but he got temporarily sidetracked by his very own hurricane Katrina with about 3/4 of a million of his fellow citizens standing waist deep in floodwater's. Now that he has managed to convince the citizenry that the whole mess was due to global warming, he can return to his original Iraqi bug out announcement.
Look for it to be trumpeted on the front page of of the NYT real soon.
That’s absolutely wrong. Brown stated before the floods that he will put no timetable on UK troop withdrawals from Iraq and, since he has been in office, the UK has sent more troops to Afghanistan.
Let us not forget - sometimes the media is nothing more than a “useful idiot” for political posturing.
Brown is between a rock and a hard place on this. The truth is, Tony Blair didn’t want to fight in Iraq, but he finally agreed because he was a patriot and he realized that England could not, as Kissinger points out, afford to kick away the “Special Relationship.”
On the other hand, Blair did wreck his career, and Brown won’t want to follow him in that. He is a very ambitious politician.
The obvious thing to do is to hem and haw and delay any definite commitment until November 2008, when he knows who the next president will be. If the Dems win, problem solved. They will cave together. If Fred Thompson wins, then it’s back to the drawing board.
So the obvious answer is obfuscation and delay, but no pull out until the situation is defined next year.
Hey Pyx - why not print some pictures of the US deserters hiding in Canada?
At least the saddo in your pic had the balls to turn up for duty.
This whole thread is hilarious. The US Democrat government is concerned that the UK might at some point want to pull out of Iraq, whilst your Dem government is falling over itself to surrender at the earliest possible date!
And they say Americans can’t understand Irony! :))))
Bwahahahahahahahahahaha! :D
What does England 'feel' about this effete 'Britain'? Also, isn't the main source of oil for the entire planet of interest to someone?
‘What does England ‘feel’ about this effete ‘Britain’? Also, isn’t the main source of oil for the entire planet of interest to someone?’
If Britain, whose govt has refused to set a timeline for withdrawal from Iraq is effete, then the US, with it’s democratic majority in both houses falling over each other to surrender in Iraq first, must be a raving homo with a bushy moustache wearing leather chaps and waving a rainbow flag. . . . . .
That's a proper name and should be capitalized. The Democrat majority. They are not democratic, although they might be the rest.
‘That’s a proper name and should be capitalized.’
No it’s not. By ‘democratic majority’ I mean having more votes than the opposition have, therefore it is not a proper noun and does not need to be capitalised.
As for your political point, I agree without reservation. :)
Observant. Half of what leftist media say is wishful thinking or attempts to push public opinion. Scrutiny is prudent. Ain't FR grand?
yitbos
Thank you for clarifying the meaning of your terminology. Interpretation is nearly impossible given a single usage by a single writer when other usage by other writers varies especially in a secondary context without appropriate available parallel readings.
- That’s all very reassuring - except for the content of the news story that our postings here are based on, which outlines all the evidence leading to what will undoubtedly be a popular bug out announcement by Brown. We shouldn’t have long to wait to see.
Brown is now in Washington and, dollars to donuts, the meeting will conclude with Brown making some squishy statement that Britain’s presence in Iraq is, “under review” followed, as soon as he can get back home, by a bug out announcement, oops, I mean “phased withdrawal”.
The BBC will then give him the full Monica which should see him coast home in the next election.
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