Comment at end of page
1st September, 2007
ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER SOLDIER
This time it is General Sir Mike Jackson, former Chief of General Staff, British Army, with his side of the Iraq story (so far!)
So much to say, so little time – before someone else gets THEIR side out there in the bookshops.
Sorry to sound cynical, but it seems that the only way to be accorded the listening ear, or the reading eye of the great British public these days is to blame someone for “the mess that is Iraq”. Then we must demand the rolling of heads. If we suggest otherwise we are looked on as part of the untrustworthy establishment.
I’m certainly not establishment, and I don’t think I am untrustworthy. But I really do think we need to step back a bit from this blame game culture, and in today’s political parlance, move on.
After all, Rumsfeld and Blair have both been shown the door. What do we want? Blood?
Far be it for me, a humble civvy, to suggest that a certain gloss is being skimmed over the top of the General’s Tale, BUT, it’s amazing how the stuff that he reckons has worked out, was in HIS domain, whereas what hasn’t quite cut the mustard, in his opinion, was in the control of someone else.
There are few of us who are going to hold up our arms in mea culpa mode, but come ON!
Jackson says, in short:
1. The USA got it wrong, by way of Rumsfeld, by way of Bush’s delegating responsibility for aftercare in Iraq to the Pentagon, in other words to the American army.
2. The British government got it wrong by issuing the 2002 ‘45 minute dossier’ even if they later discounted it, and even though Blair still won the parliamentary debate to invade Iraq the year following.
3. Rumsfeld deployed half the troops to Iraq that were needed, insufficient to win the peace.
4. The Americans go gung-ho at terrorism when they should be doing the diplomatic thing.
5. But, hey, WE THE BRITISH ARMY, got it RIGHT in Basra!!!
As it happens I hope and believe he is right about point 5.
As for the first four points, there is little new in these assertions, except, perhaps for the decision-making having been handed to Rumsfeld and the Pentagon without, it is implied, recourse back to the President.
I don’t know how accurate that is, but if Malcom Rifkind is right, that Rumsfeld had sole charge, similarly to our government giving the army full control of political decision-making, it seems somewhat careless, to say the least.
What went on behind the scenes between Bush and Blair might provide some clues as to the Blair aging process in the last five years or so. But for that, we will have to await Mr Blair’s thoughts.
Article from today’s Telegraph pasted below:
‘General Sir Mike Jackson, the head of the British Army during the invasion of Iraq, has launched a scathing attack on the United States for the way it handled the post-war administration of the country.
The former chief of the general staff said the approach taken by Donald Rumsfeld, the then US defence secretary, was “intellectually bankrupt”, describing his claim that US forces “don’t do nation-building” as “nonsensical”.
Sir Mike’s comments – made in his forthcoming autobiography Soldier, serialised exclusively in The Daily Telegraph – represent the most outspoken criticism of American military policy in Iraq to come from a senior British officer.
His attack – the first time he has revealed the depth of his anger towards the US administration – highlights the deep-seated tension between the British command and the Pentagon during the build-up to and the aftermath of the Iraq campaign in 2003.
Sir Mike, who took command of the British Army one month before US-led forces invaded Iraq, said Mr Rumsfeld was “one of those most responsible for the current situation in Iraq”.
Crucially, the general writes, he refused to deploy enough troops to maintain law and order after the collapse of Saddam’s regime, and discarded detailed plans for the post-conflict administration of Iraq that had been drawn up by the US State Department.
In the book, Sir Mike says he believes the entire US approach to tackling global terrorism is “inadequate” because it relies too heavily on military power at the expense of nation-building and diplomacy.
His outspoken remarks are likely to increase tensions between the British and US military over policy in Iraq.
Last month American officials claimed that British forces had been defeated in Basra and had surrendered control of Iraq’s second city to lawless militias and criminal gangs.
Speaking on the eve of the book’s publication, Sir Mike last night defended the record of Britain’s military deployment in Basra.
“I don’t think that’s a fair assessment at all,” he said of claims made by American officials that UK forces had failed.
“What has happened in the south, as throughout the rest of Iraq, was that primary responsibility for security would be handed to the Iraqis once the Iraqi authorities and the coalition were satisfied that their state of training and development was appropriate.
“In the south we had responsibility for four provinces. Three of these have been handed over in accordance with that strategy. It remains just in Basra for that to happen.”
Even so it emerged yesterday that the Pentagon was planning to deploy extra forces to Basra to protect Iraq’s crucial oil fields amid growing fears in Washington that Britain is preparing to withdraw its forces from southern Iraq.
Sir Mike says the failure of the US-led coalition to suppress the Iraqi insurgency four years after Saddam’s overthrow was down to the Pentagon’s refusal to deploy enough troops. A combined force of 400,000 would be needed to control a country the size of Iraq, but even with the extra troops recently deployed for the US military’s “surge” the coalition has struggled to reach half that figure.
Sir Mike is particularly critical of President Bush’s decision to hand control of the post-invasion running of Iraq to the Pentagon, when all the post-war planning had been done by the State Department.
“All the planning carried out by the State Department went to waste,” he writes. For Mr Rumsfeld and his neo-conservative supporters “it was an ideological article of faith that the coalition forces would be accepted as a liberating army.
“Once you had decapitated Saddam Hussein’s regime, a model democratic society would inevitably emerge.”
He and other senior British officers were opposed to the Pentagon’s decision to disband the Iraqi army after Saddam’s overthrow, a decision he says “was very short-sighted … We should have kept the Iraqi security services in being and put them under the command of the coalition.”
Sir Mike also reveals that he and other senior officers had doubts about the weapons of mass destruction dossier presented by the Blair government in late 2002.
“Its release caused a stir in military circles,” reveals Sir Mike, particularly the suggestion that the UK could face a threat of attack at 45 minutes’ notice. “We all knew that it was impossible for Iraq to threaten the UK mainland. Saddam’s Scud missiles could barely have reached our bases on Cyprus, and certainly no more distant target.”
Sir Mike says he satisfied himself on the legality of invading Iraq by careful study of the relevant UN Security Council resolutions and concluded that action was “legitimate under international law without a ’second’ resolution.
“Having had some part to play in putting Slobodan Milosevic into a cell in The Hague, I had no wish to be his next-door neighbour.” ‘
Read the full article on Mike Jackson’s attack of the US over Iraq.Listen to his interview
