Soft heads and gloating enemies

Israel’s doveish former foreign minister Shlomo ben Ami hymns Gordon Brown’s divorce from Britain’s‘servile alliance’ with the Bush administration in favour of a new doctrine of ‘hard-headed internationalism’ which has also been adopted, apparently, by a chastened America (although ben Ami concludes this stirring denunciation of US ‘belligerency’ with the pious hope that the next American president must use the ‘threat of effective military power’ – but not, it would appear, the power itself). We can see with what respect the jihad regards this new ‘hard-headed internationalism’. In Iran, Ahmadinejad has called the infamous hard-headed NIE a

‘declaration of surrender:... It was a positive action by the U.S. administration to change their attitude and it was a correct move.’

And al Qaeda’s second in command, Ayman al Zawahiri, has described the hard-headed British pull-out from Basra as a

‘decision to flee’

and crowed that it proves

‘the condition of the Iraqi Jihad is -- overall – excellent’.

There is another separate but intimately related issue here: the gross culpability and dereliction of duty in time of war displayed by Britain's political and military leadership. Col Tim Collins, the British officer involved in the overthrow of Saddam has said that the pull-out from Basra illustrates muddled thinking and lack of planning:

My own view is frankly that there was great incompetence in the military leadership. Those who agreed to cut the size of the Armed Forces, as they did in 2003, at the same time agreed to taking on a further commitment in Afghanistan in the sure and certain knowledge that they were unable to cope in Basra. It is deep incompetence, in my view.

I think that the removal of Saddam Hussein was a good thing. I think the chaos in Basra is a temporary thing, because I am certain that the US - which is fast getting control of the rest of the country - will sort it out. It leaves the UK’s military reputation badly damaged.

America's surge in Iraq is indeed one of the most hopeful signs. But the broader problem of strategic error remains. It is the tragedy of the free world that at a time of its greatest peril it is being led by incompetents and pygmies, who are incapable not only of seeing the big picture but of viewing events through the prism of anything other than western liberal wishful thinking. Until our political leaders make the imaginative leap to see events through the prism of Middle East thinking, whose premises are often diametrically opposite to our own, such cultural hubris will be our undoing.