Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

Al-Qaeda returns to Iraq

There is a report today in the Guardian that members of U.S. backed Sunni militias are rejoining al-Qaeda in Iraq because they are being offered better pay. If this is true it shows an unravelling of a dream that was never real.

At the end of the month American troops will, as a combat mission, be gone. A considerable number will remain as advisers and so on. There is still no agreed government after an inconclusive election. The security situation is deteriorating. After eight years of bloodshed and cost, not only in real terms but in America’s standing internationally, the apparent outcome is a travesty of the original goal.

This news comes on top of a deteriorating picture in Afghanistan and a Pakistan in a turmoil of floods, militancy and unease. The big picture is now looming into view, so large that it will have to be faced. It is not the vision of the original protagonists of these destructive wars. It is much closer to the fears of those who saw the follies from the beginning.

Soon all this will all have to confronted. There will be a political earthquake on both sides of the Atlantic. Neither Obama nor Cameron were in on this at the beginning and both now regret earlier support for these wars, albeit lukewarm and conditional. Nevertheless both have been taken in by their optimistic military and the irrational supposition that their homelands are in some way safer. Each has at their side a deputy far less enthusiastic, Biden and Clegg. All four will have to work very hard and together to survive without fatal electoral damage.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 11th, 2010 at 4:49 pm and is filed under Malcolm Blair Robinson. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.