He's blown it for Blair, again

The Guardian

Don't close your mind to the longshot possibility that George Bush may have got something close to right about Iraq at the end. If he has, and if his desperate gamble works, then we should make the mental and emotional effort to be relieved at such an unlikely outcome. Better, in the end and in spite of all, to have a stable Iraq under an Iraqi government with Iraqi legitimacy than an unstable Iraq with no effective government and no legitimacy.

Better too, if it happens, to have an orderly and chastened American disengagement from Iraq than a headlong humiliation that leaves jihadist Islam even more in the ascendant than it is today. These are enormous ifs. But do not fall for those who say that whatever is bad for America has to be good for the rest of the world.

Will Bush's new strategy succeed? There are two obvious and compelling reasons to think not. First, the vast past cannot be undone. The American presence is part of the problem, politically and militarily. The war has discredited America among many - though not all - Iraqis and in the wider region. Much of the Iraqi middle class has fled. In their place, America's actions have recruited a new generation of enemies who are not going to be de-recruited quickly if at all.

The war has disempowered the very Arab moderates it was supposed to have empowered. These things cannot be changed in a year or maybe in a generation. Bush's speech contained no recognition of that large and worsening contextual reality.

Second, it is difficult not to sense a frightening naivety about the practicalities of the operations that are envisaged on the ground, both in Baghdad and Anbar. Granted that these plans appear significantly more practical and militarily realistic than Donald Rumsfeld's original invasion, they nevertheless rest on some Rumsfeldian grand assumptions.

The Iraqi army and police will bring order to the Baghdad suburbs. Oh yes? Iraqi forces backed by the five newly deployed US brigades will go door-to-door, street-to-street, suburb-to-suburb bringing confidence and a breathing space to allow reconciliation to take root. Really? No one with any memory of how difficult it was and still is for British soldiers and Northern Ireland police officers to achieve such a goal in west Belfast or the Bogside over the past 40 years will believe that until they can really see it happening.

Amid so much uncertainty, one thing can at least be said with confidence. Even if it succeeds, Bush's announcement is another humiliation for Tony Blair's Iraq policy. Bush said almost nothing about the regional diplomacy that Blair has tried for so long to promote.

The president's only references to Iran and Syria were hostile rather than conciliatory. There was almost nothing about engagement over the Israel-Palestine crisis (though interesting developments from Hamas yesterday may hint at some progress behind the scenes). Connections with the wider Muslim world - Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sudan - went unnoticed. Europe's role in any of this was unmentioned in any way. There was no recognition that US operations in Baghdad are almost certain to displace Shia militia attacks southwards against British troops in Basra.

Whatever else may change in the Iraq situation, there is an anguishingly destructive continuity in Britain's role in it. Britain has sacrificed much - militarily, politically, culturally and economically - ever since March 2003, and has got almost nothing good in return. Today, as throughout the last four years, Bush's policy leaves Blair hanging in the wind. .....