Andreas Whittam Smith

The parallels between Bush's predicament and Blair's are close and uncomfortable

Andreas Whittam Smith — 2005-10-31T16:35:00Z

A lame duck in the White House, a lame duck in Downing Street; George Bush and Tony Blair have arrived at the same state of powerlessness by different routes. Mr Bush is limited to two terms by statute; Mr Blair has promised to go by the end of his third term. Events have so conspired that neither can retain the loyalty of supporters as time runs out.

If this were the only similarity between the political situations in the US and Britain, it could be classified as just a coincidence. But the parallels are numerous and alarming and highlighted by the the prosecution of a senior White House official, Lewis Libby, announced on Friday. (...)

- / Independent

Blair is another Chamberlain - in denial and wrong

Andreas Whittam Smith — 2005-07-25T14:35:00Z

Consider what confessing the war was a mistake would mean for the Prime Minister

Now that British people are having to confront a terrorist bombing campaign, the question whether we have the right political leadership will be asked with ever greater insistency. Crises accelerate movements in public opinion. The Prime Minister Tony Blair says the right things, and he has an unequalled talent for doing so. But public relations doesn't solve problems. It is a minor skill compared with good judgement.

In his depictions of strong leadership, Mr Blair has sometimes favourably contrasted himself with his predecessor, Neville Chamberlain, whose misjudgements of Hitler's character and intentions have subsequently been described as "appeasement". Yet "appeasement" in the 1930s was first cousin to what we call "denial". And if the Prime Minister is in denial about the impact of the Iraq war on terrorism, then his error - as error I believe it is - isn't so very different from Chamberlain's tragic misunderstanding nearly 70 years ago. (...)

- / Independent

Another meaningless victory in 'liberated' Iraq

Andreas Whittam Smith — 2004-11-15T14:39:00Z

In a narrow, almost meaningless sense, American troops have won the battle of Fallujah. But in so doing they have proved beyond doubt that they cannot win the war in Iraq. In any case, what is victory in Fallujah? The enemy had no headquarters that could be dismantled nor commanding officer who could have signed a surrender document. Take Samarra, a city that was also "liberated". As soon as the American forces turned their attention elsewhere, the insurgents returned. Two weeks ago, they carried out bombings and mortar attacks that left at least 30 dead. There is no lasting victory to be had in Iraq, only death and suffering. (...)

- / Independent

The duties of military alliance require that we give the US the troops they need

Andreas Whittam Smith — 2004-10-18T13:29:37Z

In debating the request that some British troops be moved from their sphere of operations in southern Iraq to the American zone further north, it is best to begin in the simplest terms. Start by stripping away the political connotations and see it this way.

A hard-pressed friend has asked for help. The instinctive reaction is to say yes and not to count the cost too carefully. That is what friendship involves. I have opposed the war since the beginning and believe it has turned into a colossal disaster lined with deceit and war crimes. But I understand what duty means even in a situation which I deeply regret having come to pass.

Take friendship out of it and substitute the fact that we are allies, members of the same coalition, does that alter the way we should respond to the American request? Not really. Many of the worst moments in the the two World Wars came when the allies quarrelled among themselves. Mutual irritation between the British and French high commands during 1914 to 1918 was destructive. Thousands of lives were needlessly lost as a result.

One might say to a friend in distress - you ask more than I can do, but I will see what help I can give. As it happens, this formulation comes close to reality. What the Americans are requesting is a British battalion, probably the Black Watch regiment, comprising 650 soldiers and equipment. This force is said to comprises the reserve that British commanders hold in Basra to provide reinforcements for dealing with any unusual increase in hostile activity.

Whether this is the case is the first point that MPs need to establish later today when the Defence Secretary, Geoff Hoon, makes a statement in the House of Commons. Is this reserve still needed? This is a question that only British commanders in Basra can answer. They will vividly remember that in the summer British troops came under continuous attack for more than 65 days. This is said to have been the longest period of continuous combat that British forces have experienced since the Korean War more than 50 years ago. These are exactly the circumstances in which a reserve is required. As frontline troops are killed, or injured, or simply become exhausted, fresh forces must quickly fill the gaps. In that way, the likelihood of further British casualties is reduced.

Suppose the conclusion is that the reserve is necessary and cannot be spared. Then the question passes back to London. For the departure of the Black Watch to help the Americans could be made good by dispatching more British troops to Basra. The context, however, remains the same: one over-stretched ally is asking another one for help.

Would this now be a political decision? Hardly. We are discussing a small number of well-trained soldiers and their equipment. Even as an opponent of the war, I am not prepared to argue that such a marginal increment in our contribution to the Iraq coalition requires a full-scale debate in the House of Commons. It would be more alarming if it was discovered that Britain could not meet such a modest request. For that would tell us that out military capability, for which we have paid a high price in terms of national wealth, is very limited. I believe, therefore, that the Black Watch will be sent to assist the American forces.

This brings us to the question what the regiment's terms of engagement should be. For it will find itself in a different situation. It will probably be entering a Sunni area where hostility to the coalition is more strongly felt than it is in the Shia south. So it will be more dangerous. Moreover, the British unit will be directly under American command. Formally speaking, the entire British force in Iraq is under American control, but battalion commanders report to more senior British officers. In the new posting, the commanding officer of the Black Watch would deal directly with the Americans.

There will be one more difference. British troops are taught to be peace keepers. They can mount invasions if they must, but their training is directed to their most likely use - keeping the peace in Northern Ireland and elsewhere. US troops seem to have a different idea; they put down rebellions, violently if necessary. British troops patrol in berets when they can; American troops invariably wear helmets.

Here, then, is the second issue to be raised with Mr Hoon: will any British troops sent to operate alongside American forces require a variation in their existing rules of engagement? Actually this is a rhetorical question for the answer is so obviously "yes". Such new rules would have to be negotiated between three parties, British commanders in Basra, including the Black Watch colonel, the American commanders and British ministers. Rules of engagement do need a political input for eventually public opinion has to support the way in which British troops are employed.

There is a third question to ask Mr Hoon. Why do the Americans require British reinforcements? Three different answers have been given an airing. The first is that the US does not have sufficient forces to mount a successful attack on Fallujah that clears out the so-called "insurgents". The British are being asked to make good a gap that will appear when American troops round the besieged city are reinforced. That is not an entirely convincing response. I argued earlier that Britain could easily find troops to replace the Black Watch in southern Iraq. With even greater facility, so could the Americans fill their depleted ranks.

This means that perhaps a second answer, less precise, needs examination. American officers seem to feel that British troops should share more of the load in Iraq. I think by this they mean more of the casualties. They see that 68 British troops have been killed there compared with 1,062 Americans. They want to remove the perception that this is an American war and that only their soldiers are being killed.

In fact the arithmetic doesn't support the American feeling. In relation to total troops in Iraq, the American mortality rate is 0.0082 per cent and the British almost the same at 0.0075 per cent. The difference is six soldiers. Which means that we have to turn to the idea that underlying this request are the needs of President George Bush's faltering election campaign. It would benefit the President to show the American electorate that they are not alone in Iraq - "look British troops have arrived to march alongside us".

The trouble for us is that we can ponder these suspicions of bad faith as much as we like and prove nothing. They don't provide a case for refusing the American request. We have been asked for help and we should give it. It's a bad war with a terrible outcome, but shifting some hundreds of troops from the British to the American zone doesn't change anything.

I served alongside the Black Watch in Berlin while doing my national service there. In a rather magnificent way, after a night out, they used to commandeer the city buses and drive them back to their barracks. I'd trust them to handle their dangerous new posting well if it is confirmed. And what will Mr Hoon say this afternoon? Just three things over and over again: "I cannot say"; "I do not know"; "local commanders will decide". Magnificent!

- / Independent

Why I hold Blair responsible for Ken Bigley's murder

Andreas Whittam Smith — 2004-10-11T13:33:00Z

Mr Blair didn't wield the knife. Yet the Prime Minister is substantially responsible for the gruesome murder of Kenneth Bigley, British citizen, in Iraq. For the needless invasion of the country provided the circumstances in which Mr Bigley lost his life.

In particular, the war created a state of lawlessness. The coalition, led by President Bush and Mr Blair, was unable to prevent anarchy taking the place of the brutal dictatorship. It has thus failed in its first duty towards the people of Iraq and those who visit the country: it cannot provide security. Nothing is possible without it, neither reconstruction (in which Mr Bigley was engaged) nor free elections.

With ignorance and ideology its guiding principles, the coalition failed to comprehend the size of the task that awaited it. Today, hostages can be seized at will, even in the capital. Kidnapping is the new fact of life.

But the chaos in which Iraq is now enveloped isn't an unexpected development, which was scarcely foreseeable at the time the decision to invade was taken. This is a second reason why Mr Blair deserves a substantial portion of the blame. Many of his advisers outlined the difficulties the coalition would face. Every British inquiry into the preparations to go to war, every leaked document has indicated the same thing: the risks were known to the Prime Minister. Mr Blair wilfully disregarded the advice he received.

It wasn't that he understood the dangers but couldn't persuade George Bush. If that was so, there would have been no need for the Prime Minister to have published, as he did, a deliberately misleading dossier on Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. A truthful account would itself have served as a warning to the Americans. But no warning was intended. The show had to go on.

This is not the end of the Prime Minister's responsibility. For when Mr Bigley was seized, a further disadvantage of Mr Blair's policy became evident. The Prime Minister was unable to make a convincing plea on grounds of human decency or mercy when contact with Mr Bigley's abductors was finally achieved. The Irish Government could do so on behalf of somebody with Irish family connections, but not Mr Blair. For the coalition leaders have long since stripped themselves of any shred of moral authority.

See it this way. Every time Iraqis are taken from their homes at dead of night and carted off to secret detention centres and held for months, if not years, without their families knowing where they are, the coalition blackens its reputation. Every time a prisoner is sexually humiliated, its reputation sinks lower. Every time torture is employed, it is brought closer to moral equivalence with Saddam Hussein. Every time a prisoner dies during interrogation, it descends to the depths. Mr Blair has willed the ends: he is responsible for the means.

Why was poor Mr Bigley paraded in garments that resembled the way prisoners are clothed in the coalition prison at Guantanamo Bay? To emphasise what many Iraqi citizens see as a parallel between taking hostages on the one hand and holding terrorist suspects for years without charge on the other, to match one humiliation with another. No wonder Mr Bigley's family had to turn to other intermediaries, whether to Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader, to Bertie Ahern, the Irish Prime Minister, to Yusuf Islam, formerly the pop star Cat Stevens, or even to the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. Of course the Bigley family also placed its faith in the British Government; as citizens we are entitled to do that. But what a forlorn hope it was.

I point to the Prime Minister alone and not to his Cabinet. Only in a narrow technical sense has the war in Iraq been a collective responsibility. By every speech that he gives, Mr Blair makes it plain that Iraq has been and remains his personal crusade. The Prime Minister says that he won't negotiate with terrorists, forgetting that he did so in Northern Ireland. He won't ask the Americans to swap Iraqi women prisoners for the life of an Englishman even though the women concerned have long been illegally held without trial. Might the women tell of torture and sexual humiliation if they were released? He reads the report of the Iraq Survey Group which shows that not only did Saddam have no weapons of mass destruction but that he got rid of them long ago and he sends every Labour MP a briefing note which claims that the report reinforces the case for war.

As the death toll rises, the casualties accumulate and Mr Bigley is murdered, Mr Blair remains on his mission, resolute in error.

I know who I won't be voting for at the general election

Andreas Whittam Smith — 2004-09-13T13:48:11Z

Being able to travel to work without being blown up and not having to worry about one's children in their schools matters just as much to people as whether their family has enough to live on. We worry as never before about our personal safety in this era of terrorist outrage. That is why the next general election is going to be different from its predecessors. Security has become a first-order question, along with prosperity and the rule of law. (...)

- / Independent

Why we must begin to imagine the unimaginable

Andreas Whittam Smith — 2004-09-06T13:24:00Z

Every American bookshop this summer has been selling the 9/11 report. Three years after the event - the anniversary is next Saturday - there is still a great deal to learn from the 500-page analysis prepared by the Commission on Terrorist Attacks. The report raises scores of interesting questions and costs just $10. I bought it on holiday and couldn't put it down. Anybody in Britain who is interested in public affairs, or involved in them, ought to read it. (...)

- / Independent

America's shame: how fear drove the White House to condone torture

Andreas Whittam Smith — 2004-06-28T17:55:45Z

The Americans confronted a problem. In the aftermath of the Twin Towers attack, they had successfully invaded Afghanistan and captured numerous al-Qa'ida and Taliban fighters but, in the words of one of their generals: "Some detainees have tenaciously resisted our current interrogation methods." Don't forget that the US public at the time was in the same mood as ours after the retreat from Dunkirk in 1940: this is a crisis; another attack (we thought invasion) could be attempted and we have to stop it. (...)

What of the officers in these torture cases in Iraq?

Andreas Whittam Smith — 2004-06-21T05:00:00Z

The nation will shortly have to confront the torture question. Are we content with the notion that allegations of mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners by British troops fall conveniently under the "bad apples" rubric? In other words, the military courts will do their work, the guilty will be punished and nobody else will be to blame. The bad apples will be mainly, if not exclusively, "other ranks". (...)

No other prime minister has brought such shame on us

Andreas Whittam Smith — 2004-05-10T09:13:04Z

In the House of Commons last week: "What reports has the minister received from external organisations about the way in which detainees [in Iraq] have been handled?" Mr Ingram, Armed Forces minister: "To date, I have received no such reports." Yet over the weekend a Downing Street spokesman said: "The International Committee of the Red Cross showed the Government a copy of the report in February to enable the Government to comment and take action." (...)

As Europe comes together again, one last look back

Andreas Whittam Smith — 2004-05-03T09:29:27Z

As we celebrate the unification of Europe with the admission of eight former Soviet Bloc countries into the European Union and sing Beethoven's "Ode to Joy", let us cast one last backward glance. The division of Europe began at the very moment of Germany's defeat by the Allies in May 1945. I have been reading a moving account of those days, the diary kept by Victor Klemperer, published in an abridged English edition by Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Klemperer, a former professor of French literature, was one of the few Jews to survive 12 years of Nazi government. He lived in Dresden until the city was fire bombed. (...)

The roots of Sharon's policy on Palestine

Andreas Whittam Smith — 2004-04-19T05:00:00Z

In 1923 Ze'ev Jabotinsky (1880-1940), the major intellectual influence on Israel's right-wing parties, wrote an article of unusual prescience. At the time there was no state of Israel. Britain controlled Palestine under a League of Nations mandate. Less than 100,000 Jews lived there. But in 1917, when Britain was the superpower, the Foreign Secretary, Arthur Balfour, declared that "His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people." (...)