Guardian UK: Claims of a turning point in Iraq are just wishful thinking

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Claims of a turning point in Iraq are just wishful thinking


In spite of the impact of the surge and US-armed Sunni groups, resistance is bound to continue until the occupiers leave

Seumas Milne
Thursday October 11, 2007
The Guardian

It would be easy to assume from the reaction to Gordon Brown's announcement this week of planned Basra troop reductions that Britain's involvement in Iraq was as good as over. "Iraq: the end" was the Daily Mirror's take, and the response from the Arabic press was pretty similar. "Brown has decided to jump the US ship as it sinks in Iraq", declared the pan-Arab daily al-Quds al-Arabi. That is certainly the impression Brown wanted to create, as he struggles to repair the damage done to the government both at home and abroad by what Ming Campbell, the Liberal Democrat leader, called the "catastrophe" of Iraq.

But in reality the British occupation goes on. By next spring, five years after - in the words of General Richard Dannatt, head of the British army - "we kicked the door in" of a sovereign state in defiance of the will of the UN, there will still be 2,500 British troops in Iraq's second city "on overwatch", protecting US convoys and patrolling the Iranian border. And even that level will depend on "conditions on the ground".

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Most Iraqis believe that security has deteriorated during the six-month US military surge, according to opinion polls. But the impression of success given by Petraeus has helped blunt the political pressure for early withdrawal on Capitol Hill. It has also fed a renewed spirit of triumphalism among a few brave outriders of the discredited neocon project who now claim the Iraq war is turning into a success after all. The Times, for example, this week declared that "Iraq is moving irrevocably in the right direction" and argued against any "premature British departure" because it might undermine "real internal political progress" allegedly taking place.

Now the foreign editor of the well-connected Prospect magazine has gone one step further, reviving Bush's much ridiculed slogan of "mission accomplished" and declaring the Iraq war all but won. The Sunni Arabs are begging for a deal with the US, he claims, now the "insurgents have recognised there is little point fighting" such a powerful enemy, and the country has embraced democracy; what violence remains is largely local and criminal.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2188203,00.html