The Iraq war is irretrievably lost

Don’t expect those who so blithely led us over the Iraqi precipice to admit it, however. Stubborn and purblind, the three guilty leaders refuse to admit what they have done. Fortunately, all three countries remain democracies. Bush’s party has already paid the first instalment of the political price with its defeat in the mid-term Congressional elections, which left Bush a “lame duck” president. Blair is being forced from office, and Howard faces an election this year.

We were lied to in the lead-up to war; it is now clear that the Americans also deceived themselves and their allies in their hopelessly flawed planning for the post-conquest phase of the war. The US has lost thousands of soldiers killed, more thousands wounded. Australia has wasted billions paying for its token role in the disaster and may yet face worse.

If the “new strategy” succeeds in driving significant numbers of insurgents from Baghdad - or if they themselves redeploy (one obvious countermeasure for them) - then areas now relatively quiet could receive significant insurgent reinforcements.

As Australia’s Defence Force Chief, Air Marshal Huston, recently told a Senate Committee “any time you have a crackdown there is a possibility that people who are being the subject of that crackdown have the option to either stand and fight or run and go somewhere else”.

What this means is that even a successful clearance of Baghdad may simply transfer the problem elsewhere, perhaps including the relatively calm areas where Australian forces are currently deployed.

US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice is already claiming progress because, in the few days since the US began its Baghdad operations, there has (according to the Iraqi Government - perhaps not the most reliable source) been a substantial falloff in attacks. But such a judgment is seriously premature.

It does not seem to have occurred to her - though US field commanders are wiser - that the insurgents are simply lying low or, as I have suggested, redeploying. I suspect that their strategy will be to lure US troops onto prepared “killing grounds” and try to inflict heavy casualties. They will certainly follow the spirit of Mao Zedong’s famous maxim for guerrillas:

The enemy advances, we retreat; the enemy camps, we harass; the enemy tires, we attack; the enemy retreats, we pursue.

But it is the unfortunate people of Iraq who are paying the heaviest price and, if Martin Indyk’s projections prove even partially correct, they will continue to pay. They have exchanged a vicious dictatorship for a horrible civil war; their country is now infested with al-Qaida and other Islamic extremists who flocked there to kill Americans: they face the prospect, once the US is finally driven out, of yet another vicious dictatorship, probably Shia, after the civil war is finally fought to a conclusion.

Nor do the longer-term consequences look promising. American credibility in the critically important Middle Eastern region is already shattered. Once it finally acknowledges its defeat in Iraq, the US - almost certainly under a Democrat President after 2008 - is likely to repeat, with variations, its post-Vietnam behaviour. It will be reluctant to engage in future conflicts, its enemies will take heart.

If this last sounds like Bush, Blair or Howard talking, it is because in a certain sense they are right: the consequences of defeat will be significant. But they are wrong in their stonewalling claims that defeat is still avoidable. It is not. This war is lost; it was already lost when Saddam’s statue was being pulled down on that memorable day in Baghdad in 2003, and those who orchestrated it bear the responsibility.

Their willingness to spend ever more treasure and blood in a vain attempt to retrieve the irretrievable demonstrates that their mulish stubbornness is exceeded only by their indifference to the costs of the calamity they have engendered.

Soon (though not soon enough) we will be rid of Bush, Blair and Howard. It will take a lot longer, if ever, to repair the immense damage their rash adventurism in Iraq has done.

If there is anything good to come out of this, it is that the so-called neo-conservatives and their mad ideological belief that democratic institutions can be imposed on any country by force and made to work are utterly discredited. The chickens are coming home to roost on the White House gable.

In ancient democratic Athens, unsuccessful leaders were sometimes brought before the courts and prosecuted. It’s a pity that we haven’t preserved this feature of the Athenian democratic system, because Bush in particular would cut a fine figure in the dock of a tribunal (not, of course, constituted like the kangaroo court that might eventually “try” David Hicks) facing charges of gross incompetence, lying to his people and, above all, mass murder.