ON THE WALLABY- 28th May 2007

" Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage, can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events." --Sir Winston Churchill (1874 - 1965)

HOW TO SNATCH DEFEAT FROM THE JAWS OF VICTORY – LOOK NO FURTHER THAN IRAQ?

As my readers would be aware, I have long been an opponent of the Iraq war, believing that it is actually unwinnable because of the sheer incompetence at a political level in Washington and at the military level, as exhibited by some of the earlier commanders, where the seeds of doom were sown.

In fact, I think Iraq was lost the moment Paul Bremners pen signed the initial “Proconsul” dictates banning anyone previously associated with the B’aath Party and disbanding the then Iraq Army, an act that saw some 600,000 people “on the streets” and a prime target for any dissident propaganda that could influence them to join the fight back against the “Coalition”.

So it was with great interest that I read this article in The Observer and written by Paddy Ashdown, the former leader of the Liberal Democrats in the UK and a UN High Commissioner to Bosnia and Herzegovina.

As a man who saw the horrors and atrocities of the Bosnia-Serbian war and the many ethnic clashes involved there, it seems to me that he was a man who has had immense power (as did Paul Bremner) and knows what can, and cannot, be done with that power.

I just wish more people who had and have their hands on the levers of power had the same line of thinking as Paddy Ashdown!

Read on:-

When I look to the future in Iraq, I start by studying the past” -By Paddy Ashdown

Those who, like me, supported the removal of Saddam Hussein by force now have to face up to the awkward task of deciding what can be salvaged from the mess. I have joined a new and independent Iraq study group, the Iraq Commission, with Tom King and Margaret Jay, to do this in front of Channel 4 cameras.

We will be concentrating on the future, but it is important not to forget the lessons of the past.??The tragedy is that the military invasion was not a failure. It was a success. But what happened afterwards has been a lesson in how to make a mess of the peace that follows. It didn't have to be like this.

The US administration wasn't unaware of the past. In 2003, it convened a group of historians in Washington to help spell the lessons out. One was Dr Helmut Trotnow, an expert on the occupation of Germany. The problem was, as he later discovered, all the recommendations made at the conference were completely ignored by the US war planners.

What Trotnow said should have been listened to. The allies ran Germany from 1945 to 1949 and in that period, the rule of law was re-established, human rights respected, robust democratic institutions created and the foundations of Europe's strongest economy laid. Much of this happened despite some spectacular blunders in the early days, many of which were repeated in Iraq.

In 1945 the allies planned to remove 180,000 officials from their posts, but discovered that if they did, they would have no one to run the state. Former membership of the Nazi party ceased to be a barrier; West Germany's second president was a former member.

The situation the coalition found in Iraq was similar. Most of those responsible for running the country were members of the Baath party. The coalition proceeded to purge all the Baathists from their posts. And then found, as in Germany, they were left with no one to run the state and its services.

There was the similarly disastrous decision to disband the Iraqi army. Here, the coalition did not have to look as far back as Germany. In most more recent international interventions, the soldiers of the defeated army had been given a month's salary, then reintegrated into a the army or helped to find a job in civilian life. But in Iraq, the army was peremptorily dissolved, leaving the coalition with too few soldiers to maintain security. For many soldiers, joining the insurgency became a very attractive option.

One of the ironies of the German experience is that it was the US who were the most enlightened and the British and French the most reactionary. The US military had no truck with the ridiculous instructions of General Montgomery to British troops not to speak to any Germans.

The Americans were the first to realise that dismantling German industry was a mistake; in the interests of lasting peace, it was far better to help rebuild it. In the coalition in Iraq, the Americans have proved by far the least sensitive to the local population.

Since the end of the Cold War, international intervention has halved the number of wars in the world and reduced the number of casualties by even more. But success depends on basic rules that were ignored in Iraq.

Plan even harder for peace than for war; you will probably need more troops to provide security after the war than you needed to win it; make the most of the 'golden hour' after the war ends; creating security should be the first priority; get the economy going fast; you may have to remove those at the top of the old regime, but you will need the rest to run the state; work with the local population and its traditions; you need the help of the neighbours - one of the big mistakes over Iraq was to make enemies of Iran and Syria.

It should hardly need to be said, but we are more likely to succeed if we replicate what succeeded in the past, rather than repeat what has failed. The new Iraq Commission will decide what should happen next. But the wider lesson should not be lost as to how we got here and why we must never do it like this again.”

Anyone have a line into the Oval office?

Just send this before 9pm as Dubya hits the sack then!

Carpe diem

Tony

Tony Fountain

tony@fountainandco.com

Professional Speaker, auctioneer and author

Sydney NSW Australia

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