The invasion of Iraq 10 years ago was easily achieved; it was the occupation that proved such a shaming disaster
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A column of British army tanks heads north from Basra in June 2003. Photograph: Denis Doyle/AP
The other day I tried an experiment on the kind of online acquaintances who enjoy giving me a hard time. I noted on Twitter that the Sunday Telegraph seemed to have a pretty good scoop in the shape of archbishop Justin Welby's criticism of the coalition's treatment of the poor. Yet it chose to lead that weekend's edition on what read like a rehash of familiar charges against Tony Blair's role in the Iraq war, which started 10 years ago today. Puzzling?
Not really. It's pretty obvious from the Telegraph's point of view. It shares a widespread imperative on the right to discredit Blair, Labour's triple election winner. The Iraq war, which most on the right supported at the time – including the Telegraph's distinguished defence editor, the late John Keegan – has become a popular stick with which to beat him.
The Guardian's Richard Norton-Taylor has an excellent series of anniversary interviews with Field Marshal Hindsight and his MoD colleagues, most of which seem to blame the Blair government and the Americans for what were, in part, the British military's own failings too. In yesterday's G2ex-Challenger tank officer James Jeffrey spoke of "the military hierarchy's hubris" in Iraq. Quite so. The British army was defeated, not for the first time in those parts.
But buck-passing is OK too, I guess we all do it, though the generals' and air chiefs' Guardian lament was an undignified read, a bit like some civilian officials giving evidence to Chilcot ("my hands were tied by my pension").
So, what of my Twitter experiment and the left? Was anyone interested in the new archbishop's unexpectedly robust stance, biting the hand that had just appointed him, an ex-oil executive of scant episcopal experience but acute financial understanding? Not that I could tell. Blair-baiting is more exhilarating than the poverty that his government struggled to alleviate using those copious bankers tax revenues until they suddenly went pear-shaped. Blair-bashing is the right's agenda and – as so often with human nature – it works with much of the left.
As today's 10th anniversary of the invasion loomed, most media outlets worldwide ran memorial specials, some still vengeful, others evaluating progress since US troops as well as the humbled Brits left. The Sunday Telegraph carried a long assessment from Baghdad by the former war correspondent Colin Freeman, a pretty balanced account of political failure and economic delay amid the better lives that many Iraqis now enjoy. Lots of people complain plenty, but that's progress too: an Arabic Daily Mail would sell well. Bad things still happen, but civil society seems to be recovering from dictatorship and occupation despite deeply sectarian and corrupted politics.
As for the economy, the FT's money-focused anniversary accounts say the Turks did best out of the post-war reconstruction contracts (so it was a shrewd move to deny the invaders a road into Iraq?). US hopes of an oil bonanza and lots of civil contracts have been disappointed. So much for the war for oil and Haliburton. Semi-autonomous Kurdistan seems to be doing best, but it is less disfigured by Sunni/Shia conflict (al-Qaida to the fore) that has claimed so many lives since the ill-starred occupation.
In 2002, I was initially opposed to an invasion, but as the endgame developed I reluctantly decided it might be the least worst option when set against the self-interested and debilitating calculations of the key UN players. The invasion was easily achieved with widespread public support, since equally widely denied. It was the occupation that proved such a shaming disaster.
Why? The failure to find WMD was a major blow. That was compounded by military and diplomatic ineptitude, as well as the sectarian Sunni revolt against its loss of power and privilege. Its murderous attacks targeted not just the invaders but the previously suppressed Shia majority. They're still going on. Fifty-six people were blown up only this week.
All awful and destructive of reconstruction hopes, though the Sunnis gained some surprising allies among western progressives. It was as if the Red Hand of Ulster and other Protestant extremists in Ireland 100 years ago, or the French settler rebels against De Gaulle's deal on Algerian independence in the 1960s, were being applauded on the left.
So the anti-war narrative has prevailed, as often happens after a failed war. The 20th century's most poisonous fake narrative was the German military's claim that it had not been defeated by November 1918, but betrayed by cowardly politicians. In fact, the army that had largely run the Kaiser's war was smashed, but allowed to march home by the exhausted victors. Along with pacifism and depression, Hitler was part of the consequence of the notorious "stab in the back'' myth.
That's the point 10 years on from George Bush's short-term invasion and inept occupation strategy: whoever's version wins the propaganda war after the fighting stops, there is always a price to be paid by someone, somewhere.
This is where Ed Vulliamy's agonised Observer article caught my attention. Vulliamy who lives in Arizona – itself a bit of a war zone for the drugs barons – has seen a lot of awful things as a war reporter, unlike armchair generals on both sides of such conflicts, what Vulliamy calls the "permahawks" in Washington and the "perma-impotents" elsewhere who say nothing can be done.
The Rwandan genocide while the UN wrung its hands is an example of perma-impotent policy at work. So was Bosnia – which Vulliamy reported all the way to the Hague courtroom – until the Americans took over from the feeble Europeans (Douglas Hurd, take a bow). Sierra Leone was a successful British "liberal intervention" – see Tony Blair's fateful Chicago speech in 1999. It encouraged the Nato intervention in Kosovo, which was illegal (no UN sanction) by the standards demanded by the perma-impotents in 2003, but supported politically by some.
And so on towards the permahawks' humiliations of the Iraq war and the latest reminder that Afghanistan is a hard place for anyone to run, even Afghans left to their own devices. The reaction was inevitable and Syria is the latest place where the perma-impotents' success in keeping well clear of western intervention is costing a lot of lives – with no end in sight.
Vulliamy is an old hand who opposed the war in Iraq. But he's wise enough, honest and experienced enough to acknowledge a read-across from the "rape camps" and "mass graves" of Bosnia to the carnage in Syria. He says he can't look a Syrian militiaman and his family in the eye and say: I'm sorry comrade but the politicians are right, we must not fan the flames and you cannot defend yourself or your people from the Assad regime.
It's a difficult situation. It was in Spain in 1936-39 when Britain and France maintained a pretty bogus policy of non-intervention in Spain while fascist and communist powers poured in arms and influence that led to Franco's victory. In 2013, it's striking that a lot of progressive analysis warning against arming the rebels – as David Cameron and François Hollande wish to do, but Germany (as in Libya) does not – rarely mention the interventions that keep Assad well-equipped. Why? It must be because they come from Russia and Iran, neither exactly progressive. It's as if their role is acceptable in ways that a US/EU counter-move would not be.
Vulliamy doesn't claim to have the answer. Nor do I. The Syrian war is a dreadful business that must be ended when both sides are forced to negotiate. But how? Western intervention by way of arms may make matters worse, the permahawks are as glib as ever, Barack Obama as cautious as ever.
