A view of Iraq from the ground
Posted by Peter Lockwood on February 16th, 2009
34 Squadron, RAF Regiment patrols around Basra on Dec. 17, 2007.
Creative Commons licensed photo courtesy of David Axe.
After climbing onto the coach to Aberdeen during one of the more fateful twists of my RAG jailbreak adventure, I found myself sitting next to an Egyptian journalist on his way to Glasgow to divorce his wife. Fortunately for the both of us, the conversation swiftly turned away from this awkward revelation and it wasn’t long before we were talking about Iraq. He asked what I thought was the biggest mistake with the whole affair, to which I replied ‘the lack of a plan’. ‘Exactly’, he said.
Sir Hilary Synnott’s speech a week before had made clear just how devastating the lack of a plan was. Whereas now in 2009 we tend to focus on the chaos that has developed since the invasion of Iraq, Sir Hilary also chose to highlight the now lost hope of Iraqis for a better future. Reading from his recently published book Bad Days in Basra, he spoke of the first Eid after Saddam as being a time of optimism now that Saddam’s laws that prohibited people from gathering no longer applied.
Sir Hilary demonstrated just how this hope was lost to the invasion’s lack of forethought and the damage that it did to the situation on the ground. With de-Baathification also came the removal of a great many of Saddam’s civil servants, people who would have been useful in the reconstruction of Iraq. Even the lens of hindsight fails to mitigate how foolish it seems to have disbanded the Iraqi army without confiscating their weapons. On a broader scale, Sir Hilary also drew attention to how western liberal ideology influenced the reconstruction’s failures. The introduction of a free market assumed that reconstruction could occur without the aid of significant resources from the coalition countries. The thread that runs through Sir Hilary’s description of his own work in trying to help Iraq rebuild its infrastructure is that there simply were not enough resources at the disposal of the people trying to ease the situation in Iraq.
When talk turned to future of Iraq, Sir Hilary’s response was mixed. He welcomed an inquiry into the invasion and its aftermath once U.S. and British forces have left Iraq as a positive action. Yet he also fears that if the Iraqi state descends into anarchy following military withdrawal then the U.S. would have to return. One can only hope that the withdrawal is not too premature so that history might be prevented from repeating itself. What is certain is that the testimony of those witnesses like Sir Hilary will be vital in the years to come as the long-term future of American and British involvement in Iraq remains unresolved.
Filed under: iraq on February 16th, 2009
“Sir Hilary also chose to highlight the now lost hope of Iraqis for a better future.”
This seems a bit excessive. By all accounts they do have a better future now, having endured an appalling ordeal — not merely since 2003, but since 1979 at the latest. Violence has subsided, democracy has gained a foothold.
The shocking hubris and terrible mismanagement of the 2003 war are things no one can undo — but some of the signs now emerging from Iraq are good. The original aim of the war was to rid Iraq of a dictator and establish a stable democracy. This may finally be happening — and surely it’s a case of “better late than never”.