To say we must stay in Iraq to save it from chaos is a lie

[muriel_volestrangler]

(The author used to be the editor of The Times, under Rupert Murdoch. He's still, in many ways, a very traditional Englishman - he writes books on the most beautiful English churches and country houses. While he was against the Iraq war while he still wrote a column for The Times, now he's moved to The Guardian he seems to be letting his true feelings out.)

This is a fiasco without parallel in recent British history. Iraqis must run their country: we've made enough mess of it already

Don't be fooled a second time. They told you Britain must invade Iraq because of its weapons of mass destruction. They were wrong. Now they say British troops must stay in Iraq because otherwise it will collapse into chaos.

This second lie is infecting everyone. It is spouted by Labour and Tory opponents of the war and even by the Liberal Democrat spokesman, Sir Menzies Campbell. Its axiom is that western soldiers are so competent that, wherever they go, only good can result. It is their duty not to leave Iraq until order is established, infrastructure rebuilt and democracy entrenched.

Note the word "until". It hides a bloodstained half century of western self-delusion and arrogance. The white man's burden is still alive and well in the skies over Baghdad (the streets are now too dangerous). Soldiers and civilians may die by the hundred. Money may be squandered by the million. But Tony Blair tells us that only western values enforced by the barrel of a gun can save the hapless Mussulman from his own worst enemy, himself.

The first lie at least had tactical logic. The Rumsfeld doctrine was to travel light, hit hard and get out. Neoconservatives might fantasise over Iraq as a democratic Garden of Eden, a land re-engineered to stability and prosperity. Harder noses were content to dump the place in Ahmad Chalabi's lap and let it go to hell. Had that happened, I suspect there would have been a bloody settling of scores but by now a tripartite republic hauling itself back to peace and reconstruction. Iraq is, after all, one of the richest nations on earth.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1574478,00.html

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1. Whether the UK chooses to admit it or not

Galloway is having an influence on discourse about Iraq