Iraq

Thursday

Alex Massie

The Generals & Their Plan of Attack

Actually, the General Staff’s manoeuvres on Fleet Street have, alas, been rather more successful than their efforts in Basra and Helmand province. I commend*, therefore, Paul Robinson’s article in this week’s edition of the magazine in which he argues that the Generals must take their share of responsibility for recent military failures. More provocatively still he suggests the Army has been saved by Labour since without Tony Blair’s zeal for expeditionary warfare it’s not quite clear what the army would be for these days. There’s something to that in as much as I suspect that if Blair had not committed us to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the MoD

Wednesday

Daniel Korski

Defensive moves

So, General Dannatt is to be a Tory Peer. This worries me greatly. On balance, General Dannatt did a good job as Army chief. Not a great job, but a good one. His interventions boosted the morale of frontline troops and his concern for the care of soldiers, especially the wounded, was important. Conversely, many defense analysts thought he was too cautious on military reform, blocking the Army’s transformation into an effective counter-insurgency force and opposing stop gap procurement in case it compromised future acquisition projects. But the real concerns over General Dannatt’s ennoblement are different. General Dannatt should have given his sucecssor a clear run at the job. He should

Monday

Martin Bright

What Next for the “Decent” Left?

Earlier this month I was asked to address an audience about what future there might be for the “decent left”. For those unfamiliar for the term this is the tendency on the left generally associated with backing the Iraq War (though some of the key advocates of this approach did not), opposition to alliances with extreme-right Islamism and the identification of a tendency towards anti-Semitism in some left-liberal discussion of Israel and the Middle East. The Euston Manifesto, published in 2006 expressed some of the thinking of The Decents. On the key issue of  the Iraq War, I was an agnostic. I hoped that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein would

Saturday

James Forsyth

A devastating assessment

This quote from a retired aide to General Petraeus about the British performance in Basra is, as Alex Massie says, devastating: “The British failure in Basra was not due to the conduct of British troops, which was exemplary. It was, rather, a failure by senior British civilian and military leaders to understand the political dynamics … in Iraq, compounded by arrogance that led to an unwillingness to learn and adapt, along with increasing reluctance to risk blood and treasure to conduct effective counter-insurgency warfare… …British commanders attempted to cut deals with local Shia leaders to maintain the peace in southern Iraq, an accommodation that was doomed to failure since the

Thursday

Alex Massie

A Nice Little War for Slow Learners: Is the Army Fit for Purpose?

Most arguments about Afghanistan this summer quickly became another opporturnity to bash the Prime Minister and the Ministry of Defence. No surprise there and, of course, a good deal of the criticism about the shortage of helicopters and other equipment has some merit to it. But the government’s failures, manifold as they are, ought not to be the sole focus of attention. They matter, but so too does the actual performance of the armed forces. Is the Army doing enough with what it’s got? And can it legitimately be expected to do better? The political leadership in London matters, but that doesn’t mean the Army top brass can deftly shift

Thursday

Alex Massie

George W Bush: Terrorist Appeaser?

Well, according to Dick Cheney, George W Bush was just as almost as bad as your average America-hating euro-weenie or member of the Democratic Congressional caucus. Barton Gellman – whose sourcing is pretty good – reports that: Cheney’s disappointment with the former president surfaced recently in one of the informal conversations he is holding to discuss the book with authors, diplomats, policy experts and past colleagues. By habit, he listens more than he talks, but Cheney broke form when asked about his regrets. “In the second term, he felt Bush was moving away from him,” said a participant in the recent gathering, describing Cheney’s reply. “He said Bush was shackled

Monday

Martin Bright

MPs and Whistleblowers

I’m delighted to see Tony Wright’s Public Accounts Committee recognising what many of us knew all along: a “culture that encourages proper whistleblowing… is the best safeguard against leaking”. The BBC has an outline of the findings here. The challenge is shifting that culture. Unfortunately, Britain still has an instinct for secrecy. The  introduction of whistleblower legislation and the Freedom of Information Act have made surprisingly little difference to this deeply ingrained taste for keeping the public in the dark. I sincerely hope that the PAC’s proposal that civil servants are given a route of disclosure through parliament will make a difference. But I have my doubts. The two major

Thursday

Alex Massie

Debating in Iraq

The university debating circuit isn’t quite what it once was. Once upon a time it was, if not a closed shop, a cosy cartel organised by Scottish, Irish and English universities with the Australians and the occasional American or Canadian providing whatever passed for international glamour. Changed times and these days English-speakers can lose to debaters from any number of other countries all of whom are trouncing you in a language that is not their own. Gone are the days when being beaten by Zagreb B (“If that’s what they’re like, I wouldn’t want to come up against Zagreb A etc etc”) was considered a rogue result. This is, doubtless,

Friday

Martin Bright

Whistleblowers United

Good to see three of my favourite whistleblowers – Katharine Gun, Brian Jones and Derek Pasquill – giving evidence to the Public Accounts Committee today. But it seems from the reporting that Carne Ross, former first secretary at the United Nations, rather stole the show by live video link from New York. Ross, it seems he suggested that there is still more to be found out about the Iraq War and said that the full papaer trail should be published. Funnily enough, Alistair Campbell didn’t use the opportunity of the guest editorship of my old publication, the New Statesman, to enlighten us further. It was a bold, if rather curious

Wednesday

Martin Bright

Hollywood Beckons

You will all be delighted to hear that today I finally signed away the rights to my life story. Stop laughing at the back! Longstanding followers of The Bright Stuff will remember that I (perhaps rather grandly) said I was leaving the New Statesman to work on a film project. The Spy Who Tried to Stop a War is the story of Katharine Gun, the GCHQ whistleblower who disclosed details of a joint US/UK operation to fix the vote at the United Nations for a second resolution to authorise war in Iraq. As the recipient of the original leaked document from the US National Security Agency asking for GCHQ’s help I

Wednesday

Martin Bright

Let’s Look at Who really undermined Cabinet Government

So Jack Straw has been the subject of an email scam. I hear some fraudster was putting it about that he was a politician of principle. His veto on the release the Cabinet minutes in the run-up to the Iraq war is a disgrace. The man who introduced the Freedom of Information Act has become the minister for secrecy. Listening to Charlie Falconer trying to justify the veto on the Today programme was just embarrassing. The idea that such a release would undermine Cabinet government is an insult to our intelligence. If the series of inquiries into the Iraq War have revealed anything it is that that the Blair administration

Saturday

Martin Bright

Smoking Gun: Katharine Goes to Hollywood

It was great to hear Katharine Gun the GCHQ whistleblower on Saturday Live this morning talking about the morality of the leaker. I suppose the pretext was the banking crisis, but Katharine used the opportunity to explain why she had revealed details of a US/UK spying operation on the United Nations just prior to the outbreak of the Iraq war in 2003. I have a close connection to the story as the journalist who received a copy of the original email request from the States. I published the revelations in the Observer in March 2003. The war went ahead despite Katharine’s efforts. Katharine was later arrested and charged for breaching the Official Secrets Act, although the case

Tuesday

Alex Massie

Iraqi Reality Check

Right now, Afghanistan has become, if you will, the trendy war again. So much so, in fact, that it’s now Iraq that threatens to be the “forgotten war”. Some of this is obviously due to Barack Obama’s promise to bring American troops home within 16 months and some of it because, frankly, Iraq has left everyone exhausted and keen to talk about, well, just about anything else. Here’s a reality check from Thomas Ricks, however. His new book The Gamble looks like being a must-read: The other thing that people don’t understand is that this war is far from over. It has changed several times, and it is changing again

Tuesday

Alex Massie

Department of Markets

The US Army is proposing to pay Arabic-speaking recruits bonuses of $150,000. James Joyner explains how this situation is largely one of the Army’s own-making, dating back more than a dozen years.

Wednesday

Alex Massie

The Rhetoric of War

Breaking News: George W Bush is not Henry V. Shocking, I know. According to former General Ricardo Sanchez: Among the anecdotes in “Wiser in Battle: A Soldier’s Story” is an arresting portrait of Bush after four contractors were killed in Fallujah in 2004, triggering a fierce U.S. response that was reportedly egged on by the president. During a videoconference with his national security team and generals, Sanchez writes, Bush launched into what he described as a “confused” pep talk: “Kick ass!” he quotes the president as saying. “If somebody tries to stop the march to democracy, we will seek them out and kill them! We must be tougher than hell!

Thursday

Alex Massie

Iraq and conservatism?

At Tapped Mori Dinaeur says no-one should be surprised by John McCain’s lack of interest in policy detail. Well fine. The there’s this, however: After Iraq and Katrina, I don’t think the public needs to be convinced of the link between conservatism [and] the failure of government. Half of this, at least, is entirely wrong. The Iraq War has little or nothing to do with conservative, or governmental failure, rather it was the result, in more than just part, of an overweening, arrogant belief in the power of government to achieve anything it set its mind to. Granted, the Bush administration didn’t foresee the problems that would arise and are

Tuesday

Alex Massie

Rupert Murdoch’s Curious NATO Vision

From James Joyner: News Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch says that NATO is in a “crisis of confidence” because Western Europe is “losing its faith in the values and institutions that have kept us free.” He calls for a radical redefinition of the Alliance in order to save it, including extending membership to Australia, Japan, and Israel. Murdoch, who is receiving the Atlantic Council of the United States’ Distinguished Business Leader Award for 2008, says in his prepared remarks that, “We must face up to a painful truth: Europe no longer has either the political will or social culture to support military engagements in defense of itself and its allies. However

Friday

Alex Massie

Lessons from the Tomb Raider

It’s easy, of course, to mock actors and pop stars and their worthy pretensions to saving the planet. But whatever else one may say of her, I think it’s true that Angelina Jolie takes her role as a UNHCR “ambassador” more seriously than most. Anyway, she has an interesting and persuasive op-ed in the Washington Post today: My visit left me even more deeply convinced that we not only have a moral obligation to help displaced Iraqi families, but also a serious, long-term, national security interest in ending this crisis. Today’s humanitarian crisis in Iraq — and the potential consequences for our national security — are great. Can the United

Tuesday

Alex Massie

Belfast on the Euphrates?

Matt Yglesias sees walls going up in Baghdad and wonders if the US Army is using Northern Ireland as its template: I believe this technique comes to the US Army’s counterinsurgency theorists via Belfast, where I believe they have been effective in helping the British maintain a degree of order. To some extent, this brings us back to the question of strategy. If tactics employed in Northern Ireland can be made to work in Iraq (and maybe they can) even though Iraq has ten times as many people as Northern Ireland does and even though Iraqis don’t speak English and even though the sectarian violence in Iraq is undergirded by

Wednesday

Alex Massie

Comment is free, facts are extremely expensive

I agree with Garance that there’s lots of interest in Bill Keller’s Hugo Young lecture. And like her I was struck by this passage: The New York Times has six correspondents assigned to Iraq, plus a rotating cast of photographers, plus Pentagon correspondents who regularly travel with the troops. We employ, in addition, about 80 brave Iraqis – many of them handpicked stringers based in towns that are no longer safe for westerners. Sustaining the Baghdad bureau costs several million dollars a year. We take extraordinary precautions to keep our people safe, but two of our Iraqi colleagues have been murdered in cold blood, almost certainly because they worked for