Sixty percent of polled Australians say it’s well nigh time our defence forces came home from the quagmire in Mesopotamia.
The head of the British army says it’s well nigh time the UK’s troops came home. Sixty-six percent of US citizens believe the Bush administration is handling the Iraq situation badly. Seventy-one percent of Iraqi’s want their government to demand an immediate withdrawal of all foreign military. Medical specialists in this country are demanding our troops come home now, citing the failure of the exercise to defray the threat of terrorism, and the psychological damage being incurred by our military.
From my position, none of the above is news. Oh yes, it’s in the polls, but we all know polls can be rigged. Just ask the ,0right question. In truth though, has the intervention / invasion / regime change exercise / hunt for weapons of mass distraction – call it what you will, makes little or no difference in hindsight – made any positive impact on the supposed terrorism threat globally? The honest answer, if one is prepared to be brutally honest, is no. Then why is the so-called coalition persisting? Stubborn pride? Probably. Nothing is likely to change until the respective national leaders – Blair, Bush & Howard – leave or are removed from office. Each is vain enough and filled with a sense of misguided loyalty in sufficient measure to never admit defeat, say they were wrong or let down their fellow conspirators. That’s right……conspirators.
Three-and-a-half years after the invasion and Iraq is rapidly descending into sectarian anarchy. America has lost 2,800 of her finest young men & women, the UK 119, other coalition partners, 118. The full score is easily located with a quick google. No WMD, no flowers in the streets and definitely no eternal praise from the non-existent democratic Iraq the coalition promised to deliver. Mind you, there never was a timetable outlined. No forward planning either, it seems. Bugger all intelligence, either inside or outside the coalition partnership. Meanwhile, Afghanistan is demanding, and receiving more resources, notably not American. Can’t be in two wars at once, I suppose. If only Afghanistan were focussed upon studiously in 2001 and Iraq allowed to slowly atrophy as would have happened in the natural course, the world’s major terrorism problems might be a lot less today.
Not to mention the 3,000 military and countless tens of thousands of Iraqi civilian lives that would still be being experienced today. Still……mustn’t deny the fact that the nasty old Saddam is no longer a thorn in the Bush family psyche, eh?