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The final irony of this dreadful war

Those against war and violence must hope for troops to remain. Without them, a terrible war will be triggered

Deborah Orr
Tuesday 27 April 2004 00:00 BST
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It is odd how personally armchair pundits, far away from action and atrocity, have taken their positions on the war. Politicians and commentators have made their names by adopting high-profile stands. Yesterday senior British diplomats got in on the act, by sending a letter to the Tony Blair (and the Reuters news agency apparently), telling him that they were right all along, and he was wrong.

The time, it seems, is right for the anti-war gang to start saying "I told you so". I think we should resist, however, no matter how much we are tempted. Many times over the last year those opposing the war have been accused of revelling in every little failure, every touch of anarchy, every death, every disaster. Gradually, though, it must be dawning on people that now the only alternative to this war is a more awful one.

Spanish troops, with astonishing haste, are being pulled out of Iraq. No one in the coalition seems in too much of a hurry to supply 1,300 replacements - not even Britain, which is reportedly being begged by the US to step into the breach. On the contrary, Poland, Thailand, Honduras and the Dominican Republic have taken the opportunity to suggest they might be tempted to follow the example of Spain's new Prime Minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, and withdraw their forces soon.

Obviously, as has been the case every step of the way in this extraordinary foreign adventure, opinion is passionately divided as to whether this first sign of the Alliance's collapse is a good thing. John Gray, the philosopher, sees it as a necessary step on the way to Iraq's inevitable descent into civil war. "The end of America's ill-fated intervention in Iraq is looming into view, and it is foolish to try to forestall it," he says. "It is often said that Britain should use its influence to ensure that the US does not turn its back on the hideous mess it has made, but this is mere self-delusion."

Jose Maria Aznar, the former Spanish prime minister, couldn't agree less. "What we are saying to them [the people of Iraq] is that they cannot count on us. We are saying that we are not going to help them secure the liberties that we ourselves enjoy - and that we are not prepared to take the slightest risk for them."

While there might seem to be plenty of blue sky between the views of these two men, there is disagreement only over the reality of what can be achieved. Essentially, even though one supported the war and the other opposed it, they both accept now that the Iraqis cannot at present build a stable nation on their own.

Even the Iraqis agree on this. In those slightly mysterious polls that keep on appearing, the Iraqis continue to say the same things. They are glad Saddam has gone. They look forward to self-governance at the earliest possible opportunity. And they don't want the troops out yet, because otherwise the place will go up like a tinderbox.

Mr Gray insists that this will have to happen anyway. He argues that "the notion that anything resembling western-style democracy can be installed in such circumstances betrays a lack of realism bordering on the deranged, but it is of a piece with the delusional thinking that launched the war in the first place".

I believe he is right that delusional thinking launched the war, the delusion being that attacking Iraq could be considered as part of the "war on terror". But Mr Aznar remains trapped in his illusion: "The withdrawal of our troops is just what the terrorists wanted - the terrorists who attack Iraqis in Iraq, and those who attacked Spaniards in Spain. They are the same. The want the same thing."

In fact, what the terrorists want - if they want anything except to be terrorists - is escalation. It is quite unlikely that the men who put together the 11 September atrocities believed that they would trigger an American attack on Iraq. But that's what they got.

Bingo! Another destabilised state. Another piece of gift-wrapped propaganda about how the West hates Muslims. If we want to appease terrorists, then we could not have done better than attacking Iraq. And if we want to give them a new "failed state" in which to set up their headquarters then we cannot do better than withdrawing.

The very unsatisfactory thing about the war on Iraq is that it has always been at least two wars for one. One war was that which George Bush wanted to wage against Saddam anyway, before 11 September ever happened, cheered on by the neo-conservatives and inspired by some kind of Oedipal idea that this would be a really good way of killing Dad.

The other war is the one that was constructed out of the "axis of evil" speech, in order to hook Iraq into the war on terror and provide international agreement over Iraqi regime change. This was the one that cited UN resolutions and weapons of mass destruction, but couldn't actually wait for UN procedures to be followed.

Neither of those wars was at all necessary. The first has backfired simply because the US is not good at being a colonial empire. The bringers of free-market capitalism, Halliburton and all its smiling asset-strippers, are holed up behind the concrete and razor-wire of Baghdad's green zone, unable to fix the phone system because the Russians have gone home.

The second was even more unnecessary, because it became quickly obvious that Saddam not only had no weapons of mass destruction, he didn't even have an army willing to fight for him. It is a very good thing that the US administration is drawing back from debaathification, because it was apparent from early on that Iraq was quite far into self-debaathification at the time of invasion anyway. Not a single competent person remained in Saddam's administration. Who knows how long it would have taken for Iraqis themselves to act on this.

Perhaps Mr Gray's civil war would have come then anyway. But that civil war, at least, could not have blamed on the west quite as much as a future one would be. Is it truly unavoidable, this war? Those who still believe that a peaceful handover to the Iraqis can still be achieved, are placing their hopes in the UN.

Tony Blair, now showing the tiniest signs of wearying of standing shoulder to shoulder with Mr Bush, still believes in the United Nations. Even the US administration, hopelessly out of its depth, has handed the practicalities of magicking up an interim Iraqi Authority to a UN diplomat.

There are still plenty of people who mock the very idea that the UN can successfully intervene in any civil war. But what it might be able to do is bring a decisively Muslim identity to the peacekeeping force. India, Turkey, Pakistan and Indonesia are all in talks about becoming involved. As long as the US understands that its moral imperative is to cough up the vast bulk of the cash needed to fix the mess in Iraq, this surely could work.

Perhaps the final irony in a war that has never been short on it, is that all those who are against violence and bloodshed, must hope now for troops to remain in Iraq. Without them, a terrible war will be triggered, a war that would prove a lot of righteously angry people right in their opposition to invasion in the first place.

But what sort of victory is that? Let's hope Blair listens to his diplomats, draws a line under his past failures, and starts to understand that this is not about being right. Maybe the rest of us should do the same.

d.orr@independent.co.uk

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