Article22 October 2004
No shooting please, we're British
The storm over the movement of Black Watch troops in Iraq suggests the
British elite is happy to support a war so long as it doesn't have to
fight one.
by Brendan O'Neill
'Just say no.' That was the /Guardian/'s considered advice to the UK
government over the redeployment of British Black Watch troops from
Basra to central Iraq to take the place of Americans who have to go off
and fight insurgents. Defence secretary Geoff Hoon confirmed yesterday
that 500 troops and 350 support personnel will move to the US sector,
freeing up US soldiers to (allegedly) launch a new offensive against
Fallujah (1).
But it wasn't only sceptical-about-war newspapers that urged a 'no' to
the movement of Brits to a reportedly riskier part of Iraq; so did many
of those who said 'yes' to invading Iraq in the first place, including
members of parliament who voted for the war and military officials who
have overseen much of the war. Some in the British establishment seem
happy to support a war, so long as they don't have to fight in it.
The stink over the Black Watch redeployment reveals far more about the
state of mind in Westminster than it does about the state of affairs in
Iraq. Ministers, officials and journalists complain that the Brits will
be at greater risk in central Iraq than they were down south - but what
is the job of a soldier if not to take risks in a war setting,
especially one that his own leaders helped to create? It is a profound
uncertainty about the war at home, rather than any real rise in danger
in Iraq, that has caused such consternation about the Black Watch movement.
The Black Watch troops are not being asked to do anything especially
hairy, at least not by wartime standards. For all the talk of being
dragged into a quagmire or, in the words of one report, being 'sucked
into a Vietnam-style war' (2), in fact the soldiers are making a
temporary move, expected to last around two months, to patrol an area 25
miles south of Baghdad. The US sector may be less pleasant than Basra,
but the Black Watch are unlikely to come up against anything they
haven't been trained for.
One reason why such standard postwar ugliness - whether it's insurgents
firing at US troops in Fallujah or British troops being asked to patrol
hostile territory south of Baghdad - can be discussed in such
apocalyptic terms is because the coalition thought Iraq would be a walk
in the park. They prepared for a war without much fighting or bloodshed
or military engagement at all, with a strategy that stressed avoiding
risky action and hand-to-hand combat. As a result of such wishful
thinking, any kind of danger can come across as terrifying.
Consider Basra, where most of the Brits have been based for the past 18
months. Before the war coalition officials talked about Basra as a
pushover. They hoped that the city's Shias would welcome Western forces
with 'open arms', allowing the coalition to 'capitalise on any scene of
liberation and beam it to a sceptical world' (3). The reality - a
sometimes hostile and disgruntled population, with pockets of resistance
here and there - now appears overbearing, not because these forces are
any match for the British, but because the British didn't expect to
encounter many hostile forces at all.
Indeed, the British response to hostility in Basra has been to retreat
to barracks. In August and September, when there were clashes between
British troops and supporters of Moqtada al-Sadr, the /Daily Telegraph/
reported that 'after three [British] deaths in as many weeks, the
British army has stopped patrolling the streets of Basra'. They took to
moving around in armoured vehicles, 'on patrols not more than 100 yards
from base'. When Basra residents demanded the expulsion of 'al-Sadr's
people', British Major Ian Clooney said: 'I can understand what the
Iraqis are saying, but confronting violence with violence is not going
to work....' (4)
One American general has reportedly denounced the British approach as
'risk-averse' and 'institutionalised cowardice' (5). Yet for all the
claims that US forces are imposing their imperialist will on Iraq, their
campaign too has appeared faltering and defensive. Much of America's
occupation has been conducted from behind high walls or from helicopter
gunships.
One report describes how hundreds of American troops spend their time in
Saddam's old palaces or guarding the 'Green Zone' in Baghdad, a
cordoned-off part of the city centre, massively guarded and for the
exclusive use of coalition officials, only occasionally venturing out.
Earlier this year a poll asked Iraqis what they thought of coalition
forces - 77 per cent said they had never had an encounter with a soldier
from the coalition (6). Indeed, it is striking that the supposedly more
gung-ho Americans should need 850 Brits as back up. The Americans have
135,000 troops in Iraq. Where are they all? What are they doing?
In both the American and British camps, the talk of quagmires, of new
Vietnams, of unacceptably risky redeployments, is not a rational
response to what's happening on the ground, which is not any more grisly
than what has occurred in other wars. Rather it's a product of the
coalition's misguided belief that it could fight a war with the war bit
taken out. This week the /Los Angeles Times/ reported that President
Bush apparently told televangelist Pat Robertson in private before the
war started that 'we're not going to have any casualties' in Iraq; if
this is true, it is hardly surprising that casualties, or injuries or
risky redeployments, are seen as both unexpected and unacceptable.
The fuss over the Black Watch redeployment also points to deep divisions
within the British elite over the war in Iraq. It appears that news of
the redeployment was leaked by the military itself to the BBC, a week
before the government planned to make an announcement, because military
commanders are concerned about the 'prospect of a movement of [British]
forces into the Sunni triangle', or of a 'sharp increase in military
fatalities' (7). (Perhaps they also believe, like Major Ian Clooney in
Basra, that violence solves nothing.)
Behind the Black Watch controversy lurks a clash between the government
and the military. According to John Kampfner, political editor of the
/New Statesman/: 'For all the public show of agreement between officers
and their political masters, rarely in the recent history of the British
armed forces can the disdain of the top brass towards ministers have
been so open as it is now.... What exercises them more than anything is
the idea that they are seen as willing tools of a prime minister who
uses the military as the vehicle for his "delusions of international
grandeur". These last words are not mine.' (8)
This is a quite extraordinary state of affairs - a government that
apologetically redeploys troops while its apparently anti-violence
military tries to scupper the plan. This shows the extent to which it
was doubt and uncertainty at home that made the movement of a few
hundred troops abroad into the storm of the month.
*Read on:*
spiked-issue: War on Iraq
(1) US welcomes US troop deployment
(2) Black Watch ordered to join US cordon for assault on Fallujah
/Independent/, 22 October 2004
(3) Taking Basra key to strategy
/LA Daily News/, 18 March 2003
(4) British trapped in Basra vacuum
/Daily Telegraph/, 30 August 2004
(5) A very British occupation
(6) See Another dodgy dossier
Brendan O'Neill, /Guardian/, 25 March 2004
(7) Redeployment of our troops may be the final nail in coffin
October 2004
(8) Redeployment of our troops may be the final nail in coffin
October 2004
Reprinted from : http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/0000000CA74E.htm
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