When you're in a hole, it's time to stop digging
I'm using this icon for the last time now that it's past its sell-by date twice over: Blair is now long gone, and British troops yesterday began their pull-out of Basra, at a cost of 168 lives.
According to a CNN count, since March 2003 there have been 4,040 coalition deaths: 3,742 Americans, 2 Australians, 168 Britons, 13 Bulgarians, 1 Czech, 7 Danes, 2 Dutch, 2 Estonians, 1 Fijian, 1 Hungarian, 33 Italians, 1 Kazakh, 1 Korean, 3 Latvians, 21 Poles, 2 Romanians, 5 Salvadorans, 4 Slovaks, 11 Spaniards, 2 Thais and 18 Ukrainians, as of 4 September 2007. Then let's not forget the current estimate of civilian deaths being logged by Iraq Body Count, which is currently anywhere between 71,277 and 77,827.
This is not a numbers game: just one death is too many from what has been both a completely misguided and illegal war from the start, one in which I believe the United Kingdom should never have had any part.
Also, on the eve of his 90th birthday last week, former Labour chancellor Denis Healey didn't mince words for The Daily Telegraph when summing up Tony Blair, of whom he has been very critical for a number of years: "[Blair] has enormous personal charm but I wouldn't call him a communicator. He's a bullshitter, and very good at it. Almost everything he did after 2002 has been a disaster."
"When you're in a hole, stop digging": these were once Healey's own words of advice to his fellow politicians, and he has had sufficient experience to see both sides, sometimes with the benefit of hindsight. Let's go back a bit: Healey himself was the defence secretary in 1965, when he believed abandoning Aden to the Yemenis would be a politically irresponsible act (but which the then Labour government also brought about a year later). More recently, when considering the problem of Saddam Hussein, in 2003 he reckoned the one thing that wouldn't work would be to invade Iraq in the first place: "First of all, it will turn the whole of the Muslim world against the whole of the West. Secondly, the US have not the slightest idea what to do afterwards. The most likely scenario is that there will be a civil war between the Kurds, the Shia and the Sunni Moslems and it will spread over into neighbouring countries like Saudi Arabia, a very close ally of the West, and Iran, Syria and even Jordan." So now that we've been digging in that particular 'hole' for a number of years, I wonder if Healey thinks that pulling out of Basra would be similarly politically irresponsible, or if he believes it is now time to cut and run from a war he was always against? And what of Afghanistan? I for one am pleased the UK is finally beginning a phased withdrawal from Iraq, though we'll just have to pray the Iraqi government is strong enough to prevent a further slide into civil war and anarchy that our involvement has probably, over time, helped bring about. Somehow, though, that 'prayer' doesn't seem enough, and I still believe that Blair, years ago, to Bush, should have Just Said No.
According to a CNN count, since March 2003 there have been 4,040 coalition deaths: 3,742 Americans, 2 Australians, 168 Britons, 13 Bulgarians, 1 Czech, 7 Danes, 2 Dutch, 2 Estonians, 1 Fijian, 1 Hungarian, 33 Italians, 1 Kazakh, 1 Korean, 3 Latvians, 21 Poles, 2 Romanians, 5 Salvadorans, 4 Slovaks, 11 Spaniards, 2 Thais and 18 Ukrainians, as of 4 September 2007. Then let's not forget the current estimate of civilian deaths being logged by Iraq Body Count, which is currently anywhere between 71,277 and 77,827.
This is not a numbers game: just one death is too many from what has been both a completely misguided and illegal war from the start, one in which I believe the United Kingdom should never have had any part.
Also, on the eve of his 90th birthday last week, former Labour chancellor Denis Healey didn't mince words for The Daily Telegraph when summing up Tony Blair, of whom he has been very critical for a number of years: "[Blair] has enormous personal charm but I wouldn't call him a communicator. He's a bullshitter, and very good at it. Almost everything he did after 2002 has been a disaster."
"When you're in a hole, stop digging": these were once Healey's own words of advice to his fellow politicians, and he has had sufficient experience to see both sides, sometimes with the benefit of hindsight. Let's go back a bit: Healey himself was the defence secretary in 1965, when he believed abandoning Aden to the Yemenis would be a politically irresponsible act (but which the then Labour government also brought about a year later). More recently, when considering the problem of Saddam Hussein, in 2003 he reckoned the one thing that wouldn't work would be to invade Iraq in the first place: "First of all, it will turn the whole of the Muslim world against the whole of the West. Secondly, the US have not the slightest idea what to do afterwards. The most likely scenario is that there will be a civil war between the Kurds, the Shia and the Sunni Moslems and it will spread over into neighbouring countries like Saudi Arabia, a very close ally of the West, and Iran, Syria and even Jordan." So now that we've been digging in that particular 'hole' for a number of years, I wonder if Healey thinks that pulling out of Basra would be similarly politically irresponsible, or if he believes it is now time to cut and run from a war he was always against? And what of Afghanistan? I for one am pleased the UK is finally beginning a phased withdrawal from Iraq, though we'll just have to pray the Iraqi government is strong enough to prevent a further slide into civil war and anarchy that our involvement has probably, over time, helped bring about. Somehow, though, that 'prayer' doesn't seem enough, and I still believe that Blair, years ago, to Bush, should have Just Said No.