May 20, 2004
US teetering on edge of "abyss" in Iraq.
An
article in the Guardian paints a very bleak picture of the future of the American attempt to conquer Iraq.
But across town in Congress even those instinctively sympathetic to the US military cause in Iraq were warning that America was facing a strategic disaster.
"I believe we are absolutely on the brink of failure. We are looking into the abyss," General Joseph Hoar, a former commander in chief of US central command, told the Senate foreign relations committee.
The apocalyptic language is becoming increasingly common here among normally moderate and cautious politicians and observers.
Larry Diamond, an analyst at the conservative Hoover Institution, said: "I think it's clear that the United States now faces a perilous situation in Iraq.
"We have failed to come anywhere near meeting the post-war expectations of Iraqis for security and post-war reconstruction.
"There is only one word for a situation in which you cannot win and you cannot withdraw - quagmire."
The growing fear is that the US will able neither to defeat the insurgents in Iraq nor to find an honourable means of withdrawal, while every week there will be an haemorrhaging of US credibility in the Arab world and far beyond.
"With at least 82% of the Iraqis saying they oppose American and allied forces, how long do you think it will be before the Iraqi government asks our departure?" said Senator Joseph Biden, the senior Democrat on the foreign relations committee.
Meanwhile, traditional conservatives who see American interests in the Middle East as focused on a regular supply of oil are anxious because it has pulled its troops out of one big producer, Saudi Arabia, without establishing a sustainable military presence in another, Iraq.
"Anyway you look at this, outside the most extreme optimistic assessments, we end up weaker," a senior Republican international strategist said.
There's really nothing new in this; at this point any competent observer of what's going on has realized that the US has lost, and that the repercussions of this disaster will come to haunt America for many years to come.
But what's really interesting about this article is that, reading it, one would get the impression that it is only the Americans who are in Iraq, and that they are the only ones with the problem. You'd never guess that the British have been there every step of the way, and that their credibility has been damaged as much as the US's. (There's not a single mention of the British presence in the article.) You'd never guess from it that British troops have also been beating and abusing prisoners.
Curious, but typical of the British, and of the Europeans in general. Blame the Americans for everything. Of course they want to share in the economic spoils of the war, and are busy taking advantage of the dollar's weakness to buy up all of the American assets they can get their hands on. But when things go bad, it's only Americans who are to blame.
But it should be made clear: Tony Blair and the British people are just as responsible for this as Bush and the Americans. If it had not been for their wholehearted support and encouragement, America could never have claimed that it was acting in the world's best interest, and that it had any support from the international community. I'd bet anything that if things had gone according to plan, the British would be boasting all over of their role.
But now there's no use of the word "coalition" to describe the problems. No, it's the "Americans" who are facing defeat, not the "coalition." It's the "Americans" who have made mistakes, not the other members of the "coalition." And these are our friends?
