{"id":2013,"date":"2010-08-11T16:49:36","date_gmt":"2010-08-11T14:49:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/?p=2013"},"modified":"2010-08-11T16:49:36","modified_gmt":"2010-08-11T14:49:36","slug":"2013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/?p=2013","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Al-Qaeda returns to Iraq<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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&#8217;s standing internationally, the apparent outcome is a travesty of the original goal.<\/p>\n<p>This news comes on top of a deteriorating picture in Afghanistan and a Pakistan in a\u00a0turmoil 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\u00a0protagonists of these destructive wars. It is much closer to\u00a0the fears of\u00a0those who saw the follies from the beginning.<\/p>\n<p>Soon all\u00a0this will all have to confronted.\u00a0There will be a political\u00a0earthquake 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-malcolm-blair-robinson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2013"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2013\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2017,"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2013\/revisions\/2017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}