Tuesday, October 24, 2006

 

Don't ask Maliki to do the Impossible

The poll reported in The Guardian today reveals that 61 per cent of our citizens want troops out by the end of the year. Kim Howells, Foreign Office minister thinks the same and so do a galere of American pundits and politicos. We learn that Bush has even told the Iraqi prime minister that he has to overcome the militias or face 'penalties'.

This last seems to me to be the most asinine and unfair switch of policy we've had so far. Having led us into the quagmire, US-UK have decided the going has got too sticky and so want to exit sharpish, the imminent mid-term elections having concentrated Republican minds rather wonderfully on this point. But what if getting out of the quagmire actually makes it worse(as Mountbatten's precipitate exit from the partitioned subcontinent did in 1947)? What if the dogs of civil war are really let loose by such a move? Well, the answer is, clearly, to blame the Iraqi government. After all, the Coalition invaded and lost lives in fixing it up so now it has to earn its corn by sorting out its own security problems. Fair enough? I don't think so.

Lets be clear that it's events caused by the invasion which have created the current abysmal security situation. Throwing responsibility for sorting out the mess to a fledgling, unstable, democratic government is imposing an impossible task on what many people-not just John Pilger- insist is merely a 'puppet' government. If 140,000 highly trained and well equipped troops belonging to the world's greatest military power cannot quell the fighting, then how on earth can Maliki's army and police-infiltrated and riven in any case by those same murderous militias- manage to succeed? It's like an athletics coach breaking the legs of his untrained sprinter and then telling him he has to break the world record. It is madness upon madness, driven by the political imperatives of the western democracies which wilfully stumbled into this disastrous mess in the first place.

Comments:
Well it really doesn't matter what the public in the UK or the US think. There were elections in the UK last year, and the US less than two years ago. Both leaders were endorsed mid-way through the operation to establish democracy in Iraq. The country isn't governed by dubious opinion polls and I am happy about that.

Just what is people want from this? Harking on about the invasion, three and half years after the event. They wlould be respected more if they came up with a credible alternative, but they never do. Just whinge, mainly because it was America that fronted up to the threat of Saddam and Al Qaeda.

The only mistake we have made in Iraq is not being firm enough. Suspects should be executed on the spot. That would get the message out, and save the lives of our troops and thousands of innocent Iraqi people. Though quite how anybody seriously thinks the Iraqi Government is a "puppet" is beyond me. Did you guys fall asleep during the elections? What is it with the anti-liberation brigade and their refusal to accept the democratic will of the people of the UK, USA and Iraq?
 
Really, Michael, you constantly amaze me- 'suspects should be executed on the spot'? What kind of an elected democracy does that? I'm not saying that Maliki's is a puppet govenment either- merely that others do. Though it is surely true to say that it has come about and depends for its continuance purely on the support of the Coalition forces.
 
It is entirely possible for a people to elect a government which executes terrorist suspects in the greater interests of its people. Mass executions would send a very clear message to the terrorist that the gloves have come off. Would be entirely appropriate and effective in Iraq, and I urge the elected democracy of Iraq to adopt the policy ASAP.

I am proud that the democracy in Iraq has come about through the actions of the US and UK(and the other members of the coalition of the willing). I am also proud that democracy there relies on the US/UK - with Mr Bush it is in safe hands. And if others say the Government is a puppet then they are fools and deserve to be(and are) ignored.
 
Michael
Sometimes, you really scare me.
 
Michael Oakeshott - A comic genius.
 
I suspect I would scare the terrorists in Iraq with this approach as well. I can guarantee if such an approach had been adopted in the aftermath of the liberation, we would not be having the problems we are. The blood of the guilty means nothing to me. I am interested in building a decent country for the innocents of Iraq to live in peace. And you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs.

I have contacts in the British Army. They know who most of the ringleaders are. I say let them off the leash. Line these people up against a wall and shot them dead. And I would only stop when the fingers of our soldiers tire from pulling the trigger.
 
Consider these two sentences:
"Suspects should be executed on the spot"
"The blood of the guilty means nothing to me"
Thanks Oakeshott, you do make me laugh.
 
Yes but while you laugh, our soldiers are murdered on the streets of Baghdad every day. Well done.
 
I'm afraid our troops aren't well equipped. A petition was handed in to Downing Street yesterday after 10 servicemen were killed on a dangerous Hercules which was not fit for use. It called for the government to implement aircraft failures, the very least we can and should expect.
 
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