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An Acceptable Level Of Terror

Posted March 14th, 2006 by quarsan
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Remember the good old days, when we were told that Norther Ireland had "an acceptable level of violence"?

Well, they're doing the same with Iraq, but this time as an excuse to scarper into the sunset (or Afghanistan, overstretch being what it is).

John Reid got the headlines by announcing that 800 UK troops are to leave Iraq but he modifies that

In a speech in which Mr Reid sought to “set out in specific terms” his views on when UK forces could leave, the defence secretary said Iraq was likely to be still rife with violence and suffering from widespread shortages even when British troops departed.

“The point at which Iraqis are fully in control of their nation again will not be the point when attacks cease, when infrastructure is without fault, when there is nothing left to do,”

... there had to be a “manageable level of threat” from insurgents, rather than their complete elimination. He added that Iraqi forces needed to be “more able” to deal with the threat themselves, but fell short of saying how much more able. “Our key task is not, as some claim, to defeat the insurgency ranged against Iraq,” Mr Reid said. “It is to ensure that Iraqis have the ability to do that.”

The only way they're going

On March 14th, 2006 Tom says:

The only way they're going to get out of this hole is to declare victory* and withdraw. The consequences of this are probably remarkably unpleasant for the locals, but the interesting thing is to watch how the big companies with contracts over there react - they've already got the second largest foreign army (which renders it rather irrelevant that 800 of Our Boys are leaving).

* for a given definition of victory.

Did this whole fucking

On March 14th, 2006 Pip says:

Did this whole fucking government take a degree in sophistry? I am now at the stage where whenever ANYONE from NuLabour opens their mouths I stick my fingers in my ears and go "lalalalalalalalala". Why don't they all go to Baghdad with a target roundel on their foreheads and save us all this crap they keep trying to feed us.

ANYONE BUT LABOUR!!!!!

Sophistry implies that they

On March 14th, 2006 Davide Simonetti says:

Sophistry implies that they could argue both sides of an argument. This idiotic shower cannot even argue one side of an argument.

Give them some credit -

On March 14th, 2006 Tom says:

Give them some credit - having realised this they're taking the entirely sensible action to outlaw argument :)

Actually, being an optimist, I tend to think that when power-mad people reach this stage they've already sowed the seeds of their own removal from power - they evidently only listen to a magic circle of advisors which is so removed from reality and incompetent that the whole thing will blow up and sink really quite soon*. We merely need to nudge it in the right direction. Top prices paid for Labour inconsistencies and contradictions.

* Witness pretty much every Home Office Bill I've read in the last year or so, which have been so badly drafted that lawyers and judges (who are nearly all militant these days) will have enormous fun with them. I'm nearly looking forward to ID cards on the assumption that they can't actually make it work (I'll have an Irish passport by then just to be on the safe side ;))

Tom, are you asking for

On March 15th, 2006 sona says:

Tom, are you asking for another Orwellian definition of victory? let's face it, US-UK-Australia cannot 'win' in Iraq by any stretch of the imagination just like the US couldn't win in Vietnam or the Phillipines.
Just as Laos and Campuchea got bombed to smithereens when US faced certain defeat in Vietnam despite 'standing up' South Vietnam and culminated in Pol Pot and 2m+ dead, air raids in Iraq have intensified in recent months and there are serious plans afoot to extend this carnage to Iran.

Another thing, we have destroyed Iraq as a country and Iraqi nationhood is as extant as a dead parrot nailed to its perch. Iraq today has very few functioning schools and this in a country where the literacy rate was 90% before 2003. Neither does it have a police force to deter crime, petty or big scale, nor an army that can defend its citizens. Is there a civil war in Iraq? What constitutes a civil war? In a population that has many Shia-Sunni-Kurd marital alliances extending over three generations, is it realistic to see this mayhem as Shia-Sunni sectarian conflict?
Robert Fisk describes Arab society as tribal, particularly in reference to Iraq and he should know. There is no victory to be had ever for US-UK-Australia, a country that had a constitution rammed down the throats of the Iraqis in unseemly haste by illegal occupiers to uphold private corporate profits rather than champion Iraqi national aspirations.

The only decent thing we can do is to apologise and make reparations and I say this with a lot of fury as a British and an Australian cirtizen.