President Bush's decision to send 21,500 more troops to Baghdad in an effort to reduce insurgent and sectarian violence exposes a widening rift between the US and British military strategies.
The Daily Telegraph reports that as "Mr. Bush's forces are 'surging in,' Britain's are trickling out."
 |
|
|
|
|
Subscribe via RSS Feed:
    |
If Iraq has been an Anglo-American project since the invasion of March 2003, Mr. Bush's latest announcement marks the onset of a critical divergence between the two partners, and such rewriting of American strategy appears to have been concluded without any high-level consultation with the British.
The change did not arise from a summit between Mr. Bush and Tony Blair. Instead, the president's key decisions to send more troops and reject the central recommendations of the Iraq Study Group, whose report was issued last month, were taken in the White House while the Prime Minister was on holiday in Miami.
The Telegraph points out that British officials have been steadily lowering the public's expectations and have redefined what "success" would look like in Iraq. General Richard Shirreff, commander of British troops in Basra, said in December that he would be satisfied with "60 per cent success."
The BBC reports that Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett welcomed the US plan to send more troops to Iraq, but then said that Britain has no plans to do the same.
Mrs. Beckett said it showed both President Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki were "determined to try to come to grips with what is unquestionably a difficult situation in, particularly in Baghdad.
"We welcome that and we hope that the joint effort to resolve this very difficult security situation which is undermining efforts to put other things right in Iraq will indeed succeed."
Mrs. Beckett said Britain remained focused on the security effort in Basra, but that it is not the government's intention to send more troops to Iraq right now. She called reports of a reduction of 3,000 troops by May "speculation."
The International Herald Tribune reports that the Iraq situation was discussed at a British cabinet meeting Thursday, and that Prime Minister Tony Blair's spokesman said later that "Britain and the US are in 'strategic symmetry.'"
"What the prime minister fully supports is the efforts of the US ... the efforts of the Iraqi government, and our own efforts to create the space and time to allow the Iraqi government to establish its authority and make Iraq a more prosperous country," he said on condition of anonymity in line with government policy.
In a National Public Radio audio report from London however, Rob Gifford said that the feeling in Britain, and particularly among the British media, is that Iraq has "really shifted to be America's problem." Chancellor Gordon Brown, who is seen as the successor to Mr. Blair, has already started to distance himself from the US position, saying in the future he would make decisions that were "in Britain's best interest." Mr. Gifford also says that there is an evident lack of interest in the Bush's plan by most European media, which gave the president's speech relatively minor coverage and were much more focused on domestic affairs.
The Associated Press reports that in fact Britain's "lukewarm" endorsement was among the most positive Bush's plan received in Europe.
In Turkey, the pro-government Yeni Safak newspaper summed up the US troop surge with the headline: "New plan: More blood will be shed."
In Russia, senior Defense Ministry official Vladimir Shamanov said the additional troops "won't be able to radically change the situation with ensuring peace and security in this country" ...
In Sweden, Foreign Minister Carl Bildt said Bush's speech lacked any new political ideas, and in Denmark, a key opposition politician put blame for the Iraq quagmire squarely at the feet of the US president.
Michael Smith, the journalist who exposed the Downing Street memos, writes in his blog for The Times of London that last night's announcement actually means that there will be British troops in Iraq until George Bush's presidency is over.
Let's dispose of the reports that several thousand British troops will leave Iraq by May. They are true but not in any way new. Their repetition now is simply spin, designed to disguise the fact that Bush's determination to pump more troops into a hopeless cause means the bulk of the 7,000 British troops now in Iraq will have to stay there until he leaves office. The claim will be that it is to protect US lines of communication, or reform the police. Don't be gulled by either of these two claims. We don't need to be there. But like it or not we are tied to Bush's decision. Whatever he actually said, he might as well have said that "British troops will stay in Iraq until I leave office."
- US to target anti-Iraq activity by foreign nations (BBC)
- Hamas leader accepts the 'reality' of Israel (The Times)
- More troops build US and British backbones (West Central Tribune)
Feedback appreciated. E-mail Tom Regan.
RSS feed