British Military Commanders: “We’ve Done All We Can”
The Independent has an article up in which it is claimed that British military commanders have told Prime Minister Gordon Brown that “we’ve done all we can in the south [of Iraq].” According to them, nothing much can be done to improve the situation. It is therefore that they have told Brown that the best thing is to withdraw (prematurely).
Where the Army’s aims were – when the war began – “to bring stability and democracy to Iraq and to the Middle East as a whole,” they are now ‘an orderly withdrawal, with the reputation and capability of the Army “reasonably intact”, and for Britain to remain a “credible ally”.’
Obviously, the plans of the British army do not exactly make American officers and political leaders happy. A US intelligence officer, for instance, told the Washington Post already that “the British have basically been defeated in the south.”
This is quite bad news. It goes to show that although the surge may be working in certain parts of Iraq, the situation in other parts of Iraq is not improving and, in fact, even considered to be hopeless. If the US wants to bring order and stability to the south, it has to do it on its own. This means that the US should send even more troops.
Since the American people will not accept another surge, or most likely not, and the Democrats are in charge of both the Senate and the House of Representatives, I do not quite see how Basra can be saved.
5 Responses to “British Military Commanders: “We’ve Done All We Can””
“If the US wants to bring order and stability to the south, it has to do it on its own. This means that the US should send even more troops.
Since the American people will not accept another surge, or most likely not, and the Democrats are in charge of both the Senate and the House of Representatives, I do not quite see how Basra can be saved.”
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So, if the Republicans were the majority in Congress, they would miraculously find the necessary additional troops to send to Iraq?
The Pentagons’s announcement that it can’t sustain even current eployment levels past March was a declaration of a military reality not dependent on Dem or Rep politics nor on the opinions of the American public.
This far into a national nightmare, a little reality check is needed for all interested parties.
Michael – Basra and southern Iraq are choatic with intra-shite power struggles. The British military is correct in it’s judgement that there is nothing more to accomplish. Right now the British are hunkered down in two locations, the central Basra palace and the airport. They are sitting ducks for shite mortars and they are losing a couple of soldiers every week.
The US does not have the manpower to replace the British and no other country is going to step into this rathole. This means the US will have to borrow troops from other parts of Iraq (the word is the Marines in Anbar will be redeployed to the south to guard the long supply lines from Kuwait.) Anbar could, and most probably will, fall apart again if this happens. We have no more cannon fodder available for Iraq.
If Time magazine is to be believed, Bush is going to make Iraq even worse with military action in Iran. This could mean disaster for our tired and over-stretched military.
It’s the politics – Iraqi politics. This is what will undo the “successes” of the surge in Anbar and elsewhere as well. With no central, legitimate government in Iraq, local rule devolves to the power of warlords. In the South that means militias of differing stripes, including SIIC (Badr Corps), Sadrists, Fadhila, former Marsh Arabs, and others depending on local loyalties and orientation toward Iran. Control over oil smuggling is also key to control of the South. There is nothing the British can do in Basra because the underlying politics of the region are as unstable as ever. Short-term surges of security forces will do nothing to reconcile the various factions. In fact, the relative security supposedly necessary to allow the factions to work things out was already present for three years after the 2003 invasion. There was no need for a surge because the peace was already there…and then it broke down under the weight of its own contradictions, as will happen in Anbar.
Anbar is similarly controlled by a network of competing Sunni tribes of various loyalties. Some are beholden to ex-Ba’athists, others fiercely nationalistic, others Islamist (including both pro-AQI and anti-AQI). These factions can make temporary peace as the Shi’ite factions did in immediate post-2003 Basra. But without any longterm political settlement tying the factions to a central government, or even establishment provincial legitimacy in Anbar itself, the various Sunni factions will devolve back into war again.
When Britain says they’ve done “all they can,” they are not indicting the lack of troops or willpower in the UK. They are merely recognizing the limits of counterinsurgency in a place where the internal politics of Basra militate against any peaceful solution. The battlefield will have to adjust to these political realities and there’s little productive that Britain can do to prevent this. That’s the real object lesson for the US in Baghdad, Diyala and Anbar. Surging without political reconciliation will inevitably lead to a Basra. Keep that in mind when the powers that be argue over the “progress” of the surge.
LOL – I thought that southern Iraq was a model of success. It was in Basra that the Shia militias/crime rings first came to prominence and the US press didn’t even talk about them. With all the BS about a Shia/Sunnis civil war, no one talks about internal fights amongst the Shia. We created a failed government, the Shia blood bath over power could be just as bad as the over reported Sunnis/Shia violence. But that story doesn’t fit into the current Republican(or most Demoncrats) narrative.
Lets be realistic here, the only folks who can fix this mess are the powers that be in Iraq. And I’m not talking about the ones in the Green Zone. The various religous and militia leaders WANT a big struggle for control and and want nothing to do with our agenda in Iraq. Since they are the ones who actually live there and aren’t going anywhere, they are the ones who are going to win out. Those grps simply have too much popular support for our military, or the Brits, to stamp them out.