"The unseemly blame game over who lost Iraq – so reminiscent of those earlier anguished debates over who "lost" China, or Vietnam – has broken out in full. We must now expect more of the finger- pointing that General Sir Mike Jackson and retired Maj Gen Tim Cross have now begun, and which will no doubt prompt sharp retorts and counter-accusations from the other side of the Atlantic.
Few now seriously question the substance of the two generals' complaints, which is that the failure of the coalition to engage in "nation-building", meaning reconstruction, immediately after the invasion, opened the way for most of the horrors that have since ensued and which have now laid waste to much of the ancient land of Mesopotamia.........
It is a point of some significance that the British have not presided over a level of reconstruction in our patch in the south around Basra that is significantly more impressive to what has gone on further north in the American zone......
The sad reality is that neither we nor the Americans will be leaving Iraq with much credit and attempts by either side to pass the buck are almost pointless. Worse, these futile quarrels are in danger of distracting attention from the real question; what in this terrible situation, mostly of our own making, can we now do for the suffering people of Iraq?
At this stage, with little more than a toehold at Basra airport, possibly not much. We might, however, have the decency to give the Iraqis a firm date for our withdrawal from the south of Iraq instead of slowly vanishing from the scene much like Lewis Carroll's Cheshire Cat. That at least would be a decent ending to an otherwise ignominious episode."
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