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Britain's six-year presence in Iraq, which formally ended today, is finishing as it began: in deceit.
Today, as the flag comes down in Basra, you will hear numerous military officers proclaiming that the city's security has been turned around, that the British leave Basra more peaceful than before, that they depart the field of battle with mission accomplished and heads held high.
Much like Tony Blair's famous dossiers, none of that is a direct lie but nor is it quite true. This morning's ceremony has been planned for weeks; but the chances are that this is the first you've heard of it. British newspapers and broadcasters have known about today for some time but were strictly forbidden from even mentioning that it would take place until now.
If the victory ceremony has to be kept secret on security grounds, what does that tell you about the victory? What does it tell you about the "long-term stability" we have supposedly bequeathed?
And while it is quite true that over the past year the security of Basra has vastly improved, that has almost nothing to do with Britain. The turning-point, last spring, was an Iraqi and American military offensive, Charge of the Knights, in which we took virtually no part. Until then, Basra had been controlled by Iranian-backed fundamentalist militias, enforcing headscarves on women and destroying video shops, as British troops looked on from their fortified base at the airport.
What prompted Charge of the Knights was the Iraqi government's horrified realisation that Britain had secretly signed what was in effect a surrender agreement with the militias to hand Basra over to them, in return for a promise that they would stop attacking us. Part of the deal was that British troops would no longer enter the city.
When the Iraqis decided to take Basra back, so great was their distrust, even contempt, for the British that they did not even tell us they were launching the operation until the last minute. And though Britain is pulling out, Western troops will still be needed in Basra. They will now be American.
Basra was, in short, a historic humiliation for the British Army: a shaming contrast to the behaviour of the Americans, who also suffered reverses in their sector of Iraq but reinforced, fought back strongly and eventually prevailed.
It wasn't the Army's fault: our soldiers are no cowards. It was the politicians in London who gave up, not the frustrated troops on the ground. Where there is, however, fault on the military side is in their current attempts, publicly at least, to deny the reality of the operation that ended today.
Denial is an understandable response to an experience as painful as Basra. If you pretend it didn't happen, then perhaps it will go away. There is also, perhaps, a wider unwillingness among the media and public to confront reality; still a strong wish to believe that British forces are the best, the undefeated.
But for the sake of the self-respect and the very future of those forces, still among the proudest assets of this country, it is essential that they, and we, face the truth and learn the lessons. Because there's another, albeit lesser, humiliation to come in Afghanistan if we don't.
The key military lesson of Iraq, for me, is that you should do an operation properly, or not at all. Iraq should not have been done at all. But since it was done, it should have been bigger, better resourced and with more sustained political commitment than it had.
In Afghanistan, alas, we are mounting a similarly half-baked mission - inadequate numbers of troops, inadequately protected, pursuing ill-defined objectives that have failed to win the necessary degree of domestic political support.
Gordon Brown says that "stability on the streets of London depends on the stability of the border areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan". God help us if that's so: the borderlands have never been stable for a single moment of the past 150 years.
But even if it were true, our troops are nowhere near the Pakistan-Afghan border. They're in Helmand, a thousand miles away. Fighting al Qaeda from Helmand feels a bit like fighting the IRA from Bulgaria. Gordon's mention of Pakistan underlines that that country, far more than Afghanistan, is where the real threat now lies.
I am not suggesting that we deploy troops to Pakistan. That would almost certainly do more harm than good. I'm suggesting that we recognise the essential futility of our presence in Afghanistan, and leave.
Because we might be doing more harm than good there, too. We are part of a US-led campaign of not-very-discriminate aerial bombing of civilian villages which is, according to the United Nations and Human Rights Watch, causing hugely increased numbers of innocent casualties, has greatly increased anti-Western feeling, and is arguably as wicked as anything we did in Iraq.
We are supporting an Afghan government which no longer seems to want what we want it to want - if it ever did in the first place. And the Taliban, the target of our efforts, now not only controls much of Afghanistan - it is starting to control parts of Pakistan, too.
The good news is that the stakes in Afghanistan for us are arguably lower than they were in Iraq. Britain's security is protected mainly by overseas and domestic intelligence and police work, not by air-raids on the Afghan-Pakistan border. Afghanistan has somehow never captured controversy at home like Iraq: perhaps because it started at low intensity and goes on mainly out of sight. The condition of Pakistan is undeniably worrying, but its doom is often predicted and never materialises.
Britain appears, for now, to have rejected Barack Obama's demands for more troops in Afghanistan, save a few hundred for the upcoming elections. In a week of bad Gordon Brown decisions, that was probably a good one: the American surge helped in Iraq but Afghanistan is much tougher territory for foreign armies. If we don't want to do Afghanistan in force, we shouldn't do it at all.
Reader views (5)
100% wrong.
The complaint is that the democratically elected Iraqi government had to exercise their authority over their own rebellious citizens, and you suggest that instead the correct outcome would be for the invading army to continue to run Basra?
Surely the purpose of the Iraqi invasion was to remove Saddam and return Iraq to the control of the Iraqi people, which is what happened. Congratulations to the army on a job well done.
- John, Herts
The Services have never been popular with NuLabour and have been starved of money.The MOD has been wasteful in the extreme with some of its projects but I think that the Defence Budget of this Country is now less in real terms than Bulgaria.
I think that under NATO terms an army is more than 100,000 men,we have less,do we actually have a Militia,the RAF has been halved in size in the last 20 years,and the Navy is still getting smaller.I think that in the last 10 years the Navy has had 8 ships whilst 57 have been sold,scrapped or mothballed.
Has anyone actually thought that in this time of getting projects going to get the economy going,ordering new ships,equipment,planes,helicopters,barracks etc could have positive effects on all parts of our industries.No politician has talked about this.
Your heading though could sum up the whole NuLabour government over the years.
- Nigel, wimbledon
Lack of troops - indeed, watching superb infantry soldiers carrying out a fighting advance, without troops to hold and defend gains, fighting without a tactical reserve to exploit any weakness - a perfect bloody nonsense ! Then to go through the whole process of clearing the same area again with resultant casualties, at a later date! Detachments left in forward positions, no secure escape route, patchy artillery and air cover, late replens with shortage of ammunition and water for goodness sake. The one thing that never changes, the tenacious, shrewd sometimes infuriating, but ever loyal British Infantryman. He looks around at all the wondrous technology that some say will be his demise, yet he knows, when all this has failed again, the ever fewer infantrymen will be asked once again - to tidy things up - And of course he will !
- Wills, Soton
Would anyone care to print a copy of this article and deliver it to no.10 Downing Street? I realise the current PM considers himself above the law and beyond reproach, but I keep somewhere, hidden really deep (obviously) is a tiny grain of decency.
- Marianne (British National), SW France/London
It is easy to see when you have authorities interfering who are only interested in themselves and there egos and not a real positive agenda the soldiers and their commanders who really understand the 'what is' in the reality of the war torn Iraq or Afghanistan they will not feel free to do what is needed.Authority has to be questioned always in my oppinion especially when its based on the ideas of those that consider themselves greater and wiser.
- Adrian, Marseille France
