CHALLENGES 2006-2007: Blair Will Leave, But How

By Sanjay Suri Reprint | | Print |

Sanjay Suri

LONDON, Dec 29 2006 (IPS) - Looking back, not just to 2006 but a few years more, it would seem that thousands of children marching by the house of the British Prime Minister were right, and the Prime Minister was wrong.

That seemed perfectly clear to everyone in that million-strong demonstration in February 2003, Britain’s biggest ever, that sought to give the government a people’s message against invading Iraq. That the government did not listen, that it was wrong about those weapons of mass destruction, and in its more vaguely asserted general wisdom of invading Iraq, is also clear.

This year brought an admission that the government got it wrong, that Britain will quit Iraq next year, and that Tony Blair will quit as prime minister. So after the years of mistakes, this one brought acknowledgment, and next year will bring action in line with that acknowledgement.

And yet, what is almost as alarming as the mistakes is the tone – you might almost say undertone – in which these mistakes have been acknowledged. Blair has led Britain into one of the biggest mistakes in its history. He acknowledges that, but in passing only. Now that you say it, well, we did get that one wrong.

That much this year. And next year if Britain lets it go at that, lets Blair go like that, the British people, the opposition parties particularly, would have become complicit in the Iraq blunder if all you hear is the kind of ‘sorry’ that gets said when you brush past someone on the local train.

To an extent all of Britain is complicit already; sure, opinion polls seem to be running at 60 percent opposition to continued British presence in Iraq. But no demonstrations to produce even a fraction of that Feb. 15 2005 protest. Like people, like leaders; Britain is these days criminally polite.

The first explicit, if oblique, admission by Blair that he had got it wrong in Iraq came in an interview with Sir David Frost of BBC fame on al-Jazeera television. The war in Iraq had been “pretty much of a disaster,” Sir David said. “It has,” Blair replied. And that was it for then.

In parliament later Conservative Party leader David Cameron asked Blair to comment on the view of new U.S. defence secretary Robert Gates that the United States was not winning the war in Iraq. “Of course,” Blair said.

And there he has stopped, and there he has been allowed to stop. A national and international disaster is admitted by the way, and then everyone goes their way as before.

The confessions seem deliberately understated, and carefully timed to come after announcements that Britain will pull its 7,500 troops out of Iraq next year. And the confession comes from a prime minister on his way out. Next year should see the problem out of the way, and the one who started it off. But the consequences of this disaster will not vanish in the New Year, and look like they will not for many years to come.

Blair, and Britain, are looking for a quiet exit. This year, particularly the latter half of it, saw a build-up to that. One general after another came up with remarks that the operations in Iraq were not going well, and were achieving little. It’s a fairly safe assumption that generals do not shoot their mouth in public out of turn; an environment was being created for the exit, in a manner where embarrassment to the government would be as gentle as possible.

The silence that has wrapped this U-turn is extraordinary. Blair has subtly – slyly his critics might argue – changed face on Iraq, but without raising any public debate. This is almost like the earlier volte-face on the weapons of mass destruction that were not there. Wrong to invade a country, were we; never mind.

The challenge for Britain for 2007 will be just how Blair leaves. But the signs are indicative enough: there will be no public or parliamentary inquiry into Britain’s involvement in Iraq; the focus will be on Blair’s successor in the Labour party, and then on the election two years down the line. By then the British hand in the Iraq mess would be less visible. And the government will seek to sink its failures in Iraq under a show of what it hopes will turn out to be success in Afghanistan.

The British seem little concerned where that leaves the United States. Britain’s withdrawal from Iraq next year will be strategically insignificant but symbolically potent. Of the many countries that joined the ‘coalition of the willing’ in the invasion of Iraq, Britain was seen as the main ally of the United States. Its departure would leave the United States seen as alone, even if 7,500 troops to the 140,000 U.S. troops in Iraq are comfortably replaceable.

As the far smaller player, Britain can wriggle out; the United States cannot. But going by accounts from Iraq – and IPS is one of few news groups to report Iraq from outside the green zone of Baghdad – the consequences of the invasion and the occupation that followed will be catastrophic. It will not help just how Blair answers those questions, if he ever does. But the questions will not go away.