Prepare to leave Iraq
As one who was against the invasion of Iraq from the start, I feel I must now urge a complete reappraisal of what our forces can realistically be expected to achieve there. Whatever views people may have had on the legitimacy of the various reasons presented to them for going to war, the operation — from the moment the military objectives were achieved — has degenerated into a disaster. Last week there were reports from usually reliable sources in the press that the militias have infiltrated at least half the police and internal security forces in the Shia and Sunni regions, and barely 10 per cent of the Iraqi army is considered loyal to the authority of the central government.
This was predictable as the flare-up of civil protest following the ruthless dismantling of the Iraqi civil and security infrastructure made it plain that reconstruction of a country three quarters the size of France was going to be beyond the resources of the Coalition, even including those of the United States. Having helped to bring Iraq to its present chaotic state, the United Kingdom can hardly abandon that country if — and it is a considerable if — the Iraqis seriously consider that they need us to help stabilise their security and economy and, also, if there is credible evidence that we shall be able to do so and not, by our continued presence, make matters even worse.
The question is, ‘What next?’ The politics must come first, of course, and a radical change will demand some eating of humble pie; but what is now evolving is too serious and too pressing to permit delay in making that reappraisal simply to protect the amour-propre of the political leadership. It is not for me to pre-empt the outcome but there are options short of complete withdrawal or even setting a timetable for doing so. It is sound military practice to consolidate on good ground, and an early step towards restoration of an achievable and acceptable balance of power in the region could be to build on the moral support we still have from other Muslim nations.
So far as our relations with Washington are concerned, the greatest act of friendship that we could now provide would be to press our old ally to come to a joint solution for extracting ourselves from the hole we have dug together and which we are remorselessly digging deeper.
Bramall
House of Lords,
London SW1
Kowtowing to the aggrieved
A clear consensus is developing that multiculturalism was a disastrous social experiment. Yet apparently the ‘quietly spoken and pragmatic’ John Denham MP now wants to inflict on us a multicultural foreign policy (‘Israel’s actions affect our security’, 24 September). His suggestion that we should, in framing our foreign policy, take into account the grievances of ‘alienated’ communities would inevitably lead to a foreign policy at the mercy of the pressures (including terrorist atrocities) imposed on it by divergent and often conflicting communal interests, where — as in the case of Northern Ireland — the community capable of inflicting the most damage on us would get the most concessions.
Has the ‘impressive’ John Denham thought this one through? Personally, I would rather toady to America any day.
Clive Christie
Aberystwyth,
Wales
Targeting ambulances
Your correspondent is right that several Red Crescent ambulances have been fired upon in outbreaks of violence in the Palestine Authority areas (Letters, 24 September), but wrong to assume that the attackers were Israeli. The Israeli Defence Forces are scrupulous in their choice of targets and are fully aware of the propaganda value any such attacks would give their denigrators, as well as the moral outrage that their own people would feel. No, I fear that it is the undisciplined rabble of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade whose indiscriminate use of gunfire, mortars and grenades has caused almost all these horrible events.
Your correspondent would be better employed in asking the Red Crescent and the PA how they explain the well-documented and photographed incidents where ambulances have been used to transport firearms and armed terrorists in this area.
Denis Vandervelde
London NW11
Recent incidents are not the first instances of ‘Jewish combatants firing on ambulances’. In 1947 my father (a Territorial) commanded the British army’s general transport company in Jerusalem. His fleet included a section of ambulances — I remember they were Austin K2s, the model later immortalised in the film Ice Cold in Alex. On one occasion Jewish terrorists fired at one of these ambulances on the streets of Jerusalem. They later sought to justify their action by claiming it was being used to carry combat troops. My father’s fury at such an attack was increased by what he took as a personal slight — that he would ever allow such misuse of the protection of Red Cross markings.
He therefore ordered his workshops not to repair the bullet holes but to paint red rings around them to draw attention to what had happened. This got into the press, and resulted in an instruction from Whitehall itself that the bullet holes were to be patched over and the red rings painted out, because his action was ‘causing offence to the Jews’.
David S. Tomlinson
London SW9
Anathematical anthem
I thought your article (‘Magnificently sexist’, 24 September) looking at the Filipino community in Britain was excellent. You rightly state that they have an ethic not seen in many other immigrant communities or, in the main, in the rest of modern Britain. I particularly liked your last sentence, ‘If you tried to play [the British national anthem] at the Tory party conference, you’d be hounded from the stage by a band of yammering “modernisers”.’ How sadly true. I hope this is not why you are backing the most ‘modern’ of contenders for the leadership of the Conservative party.
Philip Whittington
Elstree, Hertfordshire
Torture and the ‘truth’
Alasdair Palmer’s argument for torture seems to be supported only by unsubstantiated self-justification by torturers (‘Is torture always wrong?’, 24 September). The assumption that torture helps one to get ‘the truth’ is false. You cannot assume either that torturers know the truth when they hear it, or that there is any ‘truth’ to be elicited from this or that particular subject. Interrogation, however conducted, to find out something you already know is a wasteful and sadistic exercise; but torturers, like faith-healers, have to believe (or pretend to believe) in the value of what they do. The truth for them is unambiguous. They have selective recall. Those tortured for nothing don’t count.
In reality, anybody will eventually tell a torturer what the torturer wants to hear. This isn’t a matter of truth. It means reproducing the torturer’s view of the world with added convincing detail — entirely invented or impossible detail if that is what is necessary to stop or lessen the suffering. Read the Malleus Maleficarum if you doubt this.
Guy Herbert
London NW1
Grappling with Death
In his recollections of the wrestler ‘Judo Al’ Hayes (Sport, 24 September) Frank Keating didn’t mention the man’s finest hours — his historic series of duels with the dreaded Doctor Death. This battle of the titans had its beginning when, in the very early 1960s, the wrestling promoter Paul Lincoln started to feature a new star in his squad — a masked hero known as the White Angel. The White Angel always fought minor villains, and always won all his bouts with courage and chivalry.
This was in sharp contrast to Lincoln’s other big star, another masked man, w ho gloried in the title Doctor Death and always fought minor heroes, and always won all his bouts with spite and chicanery. When would these two anonymous warriors meet? We grappling fans waited with baited breath.
Finally, after a series of gallant challenges from the White Angel and a lot of bad-tempered shouting from Doctor Death, the match was made. Thousands packed an outer-London wrestling venue. The two masked colossi fought …and fought to a draw. Thousands went home in an agony of frustration and relief. Things couldn’t be left like that, of course. A rematch was scheduled. Thousands again found the entrance fee. And the result was another draw.
Professional wrestling was, and is, proof that you can fool some people all of the time, but clearly the promoter decided he was in danger of overstretching his luck. At the third meeting, before even more frenzied thousands, the White Angel and Doctor Death met again, and Doctor Death won. The White Angel was ceremonially unmasked, and seen to be, as many of us had already guessed, ‘Judo Al’ Hayes himself. And we all went sadly home, having learned the bitter lesson that life is not a fairy tale, that evil must sometimes triumph over good. But in retrospect White Angel Al never stood a chance. Because if we had seen beneath Doctor Death’s mask we’d have recognised him too. He was Paul Lincoln. The promoter himself.
Colin Bostock-Smith
St Leonards on Sea, East Sussex
Wedding diet
To be fat is to be beautiful’ — quoted in Olenka Frenkiel’s article on the force-feeding of young girls in Mauritania (‘Forced to be fat’, 24 September) — translates as ‘Gordura es hermosura’ in Spanish, a phrase quite common in the Canary Islands when I was working there some 40 years ago. It seemed to be a throwback to the Guanches, the pre-conquest inhabitants of the islands, and depended on the consumption of gofio (roasted cornmeal) by young virgins being prepared for marriage.
Neville Beale
London SW3
Waugh correspondent
I am surprised that Barbara Hooper (Letters, 24 September) did not get a reply from Auberon Waugh. I wrote to him on several occasions, all inconsequential. He always replied, and I have a small collection containing his thoughts, inter alia, on buggery in the Foot Guards, how he claimed the cricketing Waugh twins as close cousins whenever it suited him, and — most memorably — his assertion that Charles Moore ‘may not be sound on Women. He feels they should be given a say regardless of whatever it might be that they Wish to Say’.
Alasdair Ogilvy
Iping, West Sussex
An affordable habit
It is chivalrous of Taki (High Life, 24 September) to defend Kate Moss against those who would wish to see her in jail for cocaine possession, though I cannot see him galloping to the aid of Ann Widdecombe in the unlikely event of her being caught snorting the stuff through a £50 note. Taki would do well to consider the fact that the majority of the ‘real criminals’ who knife and mug do so when high on drugs not dissimilar to cocaine. Supermodels and rich playboys do not need to resort to violent crime in order to obtain their next fix. Go figure, Taki.
Julia Pickles
London SW1
Comments