'Disaster if coalition defeated
Welcome: A group of Iraqi children with a British soldier.
By WILLIAM SHAWCROSS
Writer, broadcaster
and commentator
March 07, 2007
IT is very fashionable and easy to declare that Iraq is a disaster, that George Bush and Tony Blair are morons or knaves and that we must get out quick.
Fashionable, easy and WRONG.
The truth is that if we keep faith with the Iraqi people, the improvement of their country should and will be Blair’s greatest legacy.
When I think of Iraq today, my mind goes back to Cambodia and Vietnam in 1975. In the early 1970s I covered the Vietnam war for The Sunday Times.
Most Western reporters there (including myself) believed that the US could not or should not win the war against the Communists.
Similarly today, hatred (and it really is that) of Bush and Blair dominates perceptions far too much — particularly in the BBC.
After the Communist victories in 1975 I went and talked to refugees in Thailand. The Cambodians had horrific stories of people with glasses being killed as “intellectuals” and of “bourgeois” babies being beaten to death against trees. They were true.
More than a million people were killed in Cambodia by the Communist Khmer Rouge.
In Vietnam and Laos, the Communists created cruel labour camps and millions of people fled, mostly by boat and mostly to the US, which they have enriched ever since. Iraq is often now compared to the “disaster of Vietnam”. Not so quick.
Lee Kuan Yew, the former Prime Minister of Singapore, argues that because America was in Vietnam so long, other south-east Asian countries had time to improve the lives of their people enough to resist communism — which they could not have done had America let Vietnam go Communist in the 1960s.
The long view has to be applied to Iraq also. The overthrow of Saddam was the correct thing to do — and it was something only the US could have done. For all the horrors extremist Sunnis and Shias are inflicting on each other today, the US rid the world of the dictator who killed more Muslims than anyone else.
Armchair pundits love to dismiss the US effort in terms of abuses at Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison. That was not typical.
Evidence of the bravery, decency and sacrifice of American soldiers is not covered enough — nor is the courage of millions of Iraqis. Of course, huge mistakes have been made by the US and British-led coalition.
That does not mean the underlying effort is wrong.
Bush’s new strategy is to “surge” thousands of extra US troops into Baghdad to protect the population better. It may be too little but, rather than abusing Bush and Blair, we should all hope it is not too late.
There are hopeful signs. The Iraqi military is ever more competent. Legislation on dividing crucial oil revenues between the Sunni, Shia and Kurdish areas is now agreed.
Most Iraqis still seem to desire a united country. They do not want extremist violence to destroy their lives.
What should terrify us is this: The result of an American defeat in Iraq would be even worse than in Vietnam.
As the al-Qaeda leader in Iraq, Musab al-Zarqawi, said before he was fortunately killed by a US air strike: “The shedding of Muslim blood is allowed in order to disrupt the greater evil of disrupting Jihad.”
If Iraq collapses, such nihilist killing will spread. As in Cambodia, mass murder is the only alternative to what the US-led coalition is trying to achieve under its UN mandate.
Bush and Blair still deserve support. Thanks to the sacrifice of young American and British soldiers, and to the courage of millions of ordinary Iraqis, the country can still have a better future — if we remain committed. Remember 1975.
thesun.co.uk
Welcome: A group of Iraqi children with a British soldier.
Writer, broadcaster
and commentator
March 07, 2007
IT is very fashionable and easy to declare that Iraq is a disaster, that George Bush and Tony Blair are morons or knaves and that we must get out quick.
Fashionable, easy and WRONG.
The truth is that if we keep faith with the Iraqi people, the improvement of their country should and will be Blair’s greatest legacy.
When I think of Iraq today, my mind goes back to Cambodia and Vietnam in 1975. In the early 1970s I covered the Vietnam war for The Sunday Times.
Most Western reporters there (including myself) believed that the US could not or should not win the war against the Communists.
Similarly today, hatred (and it really is that) of Bush and Blair dominates perceptions far too much — particularly in the BBC.
After the Communist victories in 1975 I went and talked to refugees in Thailand. The Cambodians had horrific stories of people with glasses being killed as “intellectuals” and of “bourgeois” babies being beaten to death against trees. They were true.
More than a million people were killed in Cambodia by the Communist Khmer Rouge.
In Vietnam and Laos, the Communists created cruel labour camps and millions of people fled, mostly by boat and mostly to the US, which they have enriched ever since. Iraq is often now compared to the “disaster of Vietnam”. Not so quick.
Lee Kuan Yew, the former Prime Minister of Singapore, argues that because America was in Vietnam so long, other south-east Asian countries had time to improve the lives of their people enough to resist communism — which they could not have done had America let Vietnam go Communist in the 1960s.
The long view has to be applied to Iraq also. The overthrow of Saddam was the correct thing to do — and it was something only the US could have done. For all the horrors extremist Sunnis and Shias are inflicting on each other today, the US rid the world of the dictator who killed more Muslims than anyone else.
Armchair pundits love to dismiss the US effort in terms of abuses at Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison. That was not typical.
Evidence of the bravery, decency and sacrifice of American soldiers is not covered enough — nor is the courage of millions of Iraqis. Of course, huge mistakes have been made by the US and British-led coalition.
That does not mean the underlying effort is wrong.
Bush’s new strategy is to “surge” thousands of extra US troops into Baghdad to protect the population better. It may be too little but, rather than abusing Bush and Blair, we should all hope it is not too late.
There are hopeful signs. The Iraqi military is ever more competent. Legislation on dividing crucial oil revenues between the Sunni, Shia and Kurdish areas is now agreed.
Most Iraqis still seem to desire a united country. They do not want extremist violence to destroy their lives.
What should terrify us is this: The result of an American defeat in Iraq would be even worse than in Vietnam.
As the al-Qaeda leader in Iraq, Musab al-Zarqawi, said before he was fortunately killed by a US air strike: “The shedding of Muslim blood is allowed in order to disrupt the greater evil of disrupting Jihad.”
If Iraq collapses, such nihilist killing will spread. As in Cambodia, mass murder is the only alternative to what the US-led coalition is trying to achieve under its UN mandate.
Bush and Blair still deserve support. Thanks to the sacrifice of young American and British soldiers, and to the courage of millions of ordinary Iraqis, the country can still have a better future — if we remain committed. Remember 1975.
thesun.co.uk
