Across the pond

President Bush at his press conference yesterday, and Tony Blair, at his press conference last week, insisted that there were to be no immediate changes in Iraq policy. Both leaders were desparately trying to regain their authority in the face of the steady stream of evidence this month that they are losing all four wars they are fighting; the war to resist the Taliban in Afghanistan, the war to oust Saadam Hussein, the war against Hizbullah in Lebanon and the war against terror.

All four wars are failing because of the mistake made in 2003 when Bush decided to start bombing Iraq without waiting for the outcome of efforts in the United Nations to win support from as many countries as possible for action in Iraq. Blair, despite the strong opposition in his own party (including several members of his cabinet) gave his support.

That produced what will surely go down in history as one of the most astonishing contradictions ever. Two of the oldest democracies in the world joined together in attempting to impose democracy on a third country, by the use of the overwhelming military force possessed by the United States. Although the survey results which suggested that 600,000 Iraqi civilians have lost their lives thanks to Bush’s war have been queried, there is growing evidence from several sources that more civilians have been killed since 2003 than during the whole of Hussein’s rule. That is why increasingly American and British troops are regarded as invaders, rather than policemen.

In retrospect, the most critical event this month has been the intervention by the British Chief of the General Staff, General Sir Richard Dannatt, who called for a withdrawal from Iraq sooner rather than later. At his press conference last week Blair kept insisting that he agreed with everything that Sir Richard had said. In the same press conference he insisted that he had not changed his own position, insisting that our troops should remain until the job was done, even if that took several more years.

Two other British generals came out supporting his arguments. All three are still in office. The spokesman for the US forces in Baghdad, General William Caldwell, did not enter in to the political debate, but he made it quite clear that he thought the war was not being won.

In the press both The Economist in Britain and the Washington Post dealt raised the question as to whether we should withdraw. The clearest statement came from the Post. Their leader, and this from a paper which despite its liberal stance has been distinctly hesitant to oppose an American led war in which American lives are at risk.

The headline was: ‘Change course in Iraq. Bush must revise the US strategy.’

The definitive paragraph was:

‘The best option that has not yet been tried is a peace conference attended by all the Iraqi parties, as well as Iraq’s neighbors, the United Nations and other powers, such as the European Union and the Arab League. Similar conferences brokered the end of civil wars in Lebanon, Bosnia and Congo. The United States and other outside powers cannot impose a solution, but they can press the Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds to make the deals they know are needed: on oil revenue; on an amnesty for insurgents and former Baathists; on the terms by which Iraq may be divided into federal regions.’

Immediate withdrawal, in the Post view, is not an option, because of danger of worse carnage and the damage that would do to America’s reputation. But, whatever they say in public, both Bush and Blair must be desparately looking for an exit strategy.

The exit strategy will have to be some kind of political solution. Because it has to satisfy the warring factions in Iraq, the democratic government in Lebanon, and it has to be a way forward that will keep the peace between the Israelis and the Arab nations in the middle east. Because the military solution has not only failed it has lost the support of most of the American and British electorate.

In America Bush will have to take account of that because the Democrats are clearly going to increase their strength in the mid-term elections on 7 November. In Britain, Blair has not yet had an effective challenge to his Iraq policies by other politicians. But there has been a squawk from the first cuckoo of autumn.

Clare Short, who as international development secretary in his cabinet, first tried to argue the case for an international and political solution and finally resigned from the cabinet some months after the Iraq war began. At the end of last week she went one step further and declared that she was no longer going to obey the Labour whip.

It was an invitation to the Labour leadership to make a martyr of her by expelling her from the party. That invitation has not yet been taken up. Nor is it likely to be. The electorate of the Labour Party will shortly be asked to exercise its democratic rights. Presently the leading contender is still Gordon Brown. He may have been helped by that section in David Blunkett’s memoirs, serialised last week, which report that he consistently opposed the Iraq war in cabinet. But his public pronouncements have frequently been more beligerant than those of Blair.

If he is going to win the leadership he will have to develop a coherent policy on what to do about the current debacle in Iraq.