The British are, by far, our biggest ally in the war in Iraq. Their troop strength there currently is at 5,500, compared with our 130,000+ and double that if you add in "defense contractors". That's a little less than 20:1 or 40:1, depending in how you want to look at it.
Over the last year, they have abdicated responsibility for military oversight of all but one of the provinces that they were originally given to administer, with the exception being Basra, on the Southern Border with Kuwait. Today, they pulled out of Basra, moving their troops out of town, to fortified positions surrounding the city's airport. The airport, is not strategic in any sense, except as an excellent position from which to flee.
The situation in Basra is not good. While the official British position is that they are retreating in order to effect a supervised turnover of power to the Iraqi civil authorities, no one expects that to happen. The city will be divided up between the various militia groups and partisan fighting will ensue. This has been the pattern as the British have left province after province in Southern Iraq. The unofficial rationale for this staged withdrawal in Iraq, is that no progress in Iraq is being made and none is likely, given the resources in men and material in Iraq. " We've done all that we can do", is the term heard most often to describe the unofficial British policy in Iraq. While British forces are not likely to be pulled out in mass, another 10% draw down of 500 men are scheduled to leave no later than November and no one doubts that more withdrawals will be announced soon.
In England, this weekend, two retired Generals and a former Foreign Minister all publicly castigated the Bush administration for it's slipshod and short sighted planning for the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq. These men were all directly involved in the invasion, highly placed and universally admired, at least up until this point. In a nutshell, they stated that the Americans bet the farm that they would be welcomed as liberators and a stable civilian government would soon be in place. They lost the bet and now the wager must be redeemed.
The war in Iraq has never had great popular support in Britain. The unpopularity of the war is eclipsed by the revulsion the populace commonly hold for George Bush and his Neocon handlers, a revulsion shared by most of the civilized World.
President Bush today made a surprise visit to Anbar Province in Iraq, landing Air Force One at the heavily fortified al Asad airbase, in a much needed attempt to bolster American public opinion of the war. He expressed satisfaction with the progress of the war and went so far as to say that some forces might soon be withdrawn. This news was well received by the troops, most of whom are near or beyond the end of their projected deployment dates and many of whom are veterans of multiple deployments.
Whether you agree with the war in Iraq or not, I think it is safe to say that the war is at a critical juncture. I think that we, the American people, are also not being given all of the real facts about the situation, as it stands, in Iraq. I realize that there is often a great deal of censorship in the name of operational security during wartime. This is only possible, however if the populace has some small modicum of trust that the leadership is acting in their best interest, or at least can be relied upon to act with minimal levels of competence. Neither one of these things is evident to anybody in this case.
No comments:
Post a Comment