IT is hardly the great retreat from empire, but it was a resonant moment when George W. Bush announced the withdrawal of 8,000 troops from Iraq. This will leave troop levels at the end of his presidency at around 138,000 US soldiers in Iraq — slightly more than when the surge of reinforcements began just under two years ago.
Bush has tried to claim success and that “victory”, as he always loves to put it, is within reach. But in truth, if his saner military advisers are to be heeded, it is not so much a story of too little, too late, but too little, too soon.
His overall commander in Iraq now, Gen. Ray Odierno, has said he would like to keep US troop levels at around 140,000. They have much to do in the coming year, from trying to give security to provincial elections, to preventing the partisan politics of Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki pitching Iraq into round two of a Shiite-Sunni civil war.
He knows, come next summer, that he has to put the framework of a divisional structure into Basra, an unwelcome and unexpected chore 18 months ago when the surge began. But the British in Basra are exhausted and want out. For them, it is part of the long recessional from empire. The Brits have been going into Basra since 1912, and put four expeditions there since 1917.
This time, they will be out, and out for good: A strange retreat — or better to be blunt and use the title of the great Marc Bloch’s memoir of the collapse in France in 1940, Strange Defeat. Either way, retreat or defeat, the folly of the UK’s post-imperial last incursion into Iraq must be accounted for. Not by the soldiers, but the political masters who sent them in the first place: Blair, Straw, Hoon, Reid, Brown, Miliband and Browne. Four of those are lawyers, and might well note that, in the days of Warren Hastings at least, they would have been ripe for articles of impeachment.
Iraq is now America’s — and the Iraqis’ — game and the coalition, so called, counts not a fig. Tuesday’s announcement of the pullout of 8,000 American soldiers sends a clear message of “over to you” to the US presidential contestants. They have a deadline, too, for the Iraqis want all international forces out in 2012.
Sounding a pianissimo note of caution, Bush said, “the progress in Iraq is fragile and reversible” — an astonishing note of realism by his standards. The great fear is that the provincial elections could lead to a settling of scores for real local power across the country, and national cohesion with a coherent government and constitution will become all but impossible.
Bush’s muted assurances that things are going in the right direction now hasn’t won over the critics. “I am stunned that President Bush has decided to bring so few troops home from Iraq and send so few troops to Afghanistan,” said Democrat Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader.
Military commanders are now going public about concerns over the rising violence in Afghanistan, their main serial foreign nightmare. Commanders like the new Cent Com chief, Gen. David Petraeus, would like an extra US brigade sent now to southern Afghanistan, bringing the overall US troop presence from the current 33,000 to around 40,000. Even so, this would bring the combat power of international forces to something less than half that is available in Iraq.
The US has started to go public about its contempt for its NATO allies, particularly the British who they believe have let them down badly in Iraq. Within European governments and armed forces, however, there is a growing sense that not only is the US scheme of operations in Afghanistan muddled and wrong-headed, but ultimately self-defeating.
International media, particularly in the world of blogs, are now filled with allegations of US aircraft and drones hitting women and children in Afghanistan in targeting cock-ups on an almost daily basis.
Behind the scenes, British commanders have been warning of the lack of strategic focus — in other words lack of coherent purpose — of the international enterprise in Afghanistan. “The thinking is all tactical and, not strategic,” a senior British commander stated bluntly two months ago.
Putting a few thousand more US troops into Afghanistan — any more than pulling a few thousand out of Iraq — will make not much difference in the audit of history on both conflicts. For neither problem is the solution primarily military. And that is what George W. Bush failed to appreciate at the end of 2001, in the spring of 2003, and right now.
