Blair and loyalty
Planning is important. It should, therefore, be done well, particularly when the endeavour in question is the occupation and democratisation of a distant nation following its military conquest.
It seems obvious in retrospect but I know that I and others were concerned about these issues at the time before the invasion of Iraq, although for my part I let my support for the war and my trust in the military’s determination not to let the administration drive them over a cliff override those concerns. To be clear, I was a war supporter and I quelled my misgivings.
Jay Garner was called to string all the plans together in January of 2003 (doesn’t that seem a bit late, given the enormous magnitude of the task?) and says that he had enough people by February (the invasion started in March).
We should remind ourselves of the confidence of the civilian leadership of the Pentagon at that time:
In his testimony, Mr. Wolfowitz ticked off several reasons why he believed a much smaller coalition peacekeeping force than General Shinseki envisioned would be sufficient to police and rebuild postwar Iraq. He said there was no history of ethnic strife in Iraq, as there was in Bosnia or Kosovo. He said Iraqi civilians would welcome an American-led liberation force that “stayed as long as necessary but left as soon as possible,” but would oppose a long-term occupation force. And he said that nations that oppose war with Iraq would likely sign up to help rebuild it. “I would expect that even countries like France will have a strong interest in assisting Iraq in reconstruction,” Mr. Wolfowitz said. He added that many Iraqi expatriates would likely return home to help.
Well it turns out that Tony Blair was pretty worried about the faith-based approach of the administration, too. Sir David Manning:
Manning reveals that Blair was so concerned that he sent him to Washington in March 2002, a full year before the invasion. Manning recalls: ‘The difficulties the Prime Minister had in mind were particularly, how difficult was this operation going to be? If they did decide to intervene, what would it be like on the ground? How would you do it? What would the reaction be if you did it, what would happen on the morning after?
‘All these issues needed to be thrashed out. It wasn’t to say that they weren’t thinking about them, but I didn’t see the evidence at that stage that these things had been thoroughly rehearsed and thoroughly thought through.’
On his return to London, Manning wrote a highly-critical secret memo to Blair. ‘I think there is a real risk that the [Bush] administration underestimates the difficulties,’ it said. ‘They may agree that failure isn’t an option, but this does not mean that they will avoid it.’
But wasn’t Blair reassuring the nation that it would all turn out OK? Surely he didn’t have private problems with the plan? You betcha he did:
Sir Jeremy Greenstock, Britain’s envoy to the postwar administration in Baghdad, confirms that Blair was in despair. ‘There were moments of throwing his hands in the air: “What can we do?” He was tearing his hair over some of the deficiencies.’ The failure to prepare meant that Iraq quickly fell apart. Greenstock adds: ‘I just felt it was slipping away from us really, from the beginning. There was no security force controlling the streets. There was no police force to speak of.’
And this is where, I think, loyalty comes in. The alliance between the UK and the US is important and valuable to the British; that means that the British government will show more loyalty to the US than would be the case just based on an assessment of their actions (and, in fact, that’s pretty much a prerequisite for ‘loyalty’). Bush, to give him credit, offered Blair a way out:
Condoleezza Rice, then Bush’s national security adviser, confirms that the President offered Blair a way out. Bush told Blair: ‘Perhaps there’s some other way that Britain can be involved.’ Blair replied: ‘No, I’m with you.’
The UK decided not to get involved in Vietnam. That has, I think, to be seen as a wise decision. It may have been that Blair, unable to convince the President to bring the huge resources of the Pentagon to bear on planning for the postwar and facing an administration who seemed more worried about what they were going to do with all the flowers they were given by a grateful Iraqi populace than they were about ensuring law and order during the transition from a Saddam-governed Iraq, should have taken a pass. I was wrong to quell my misgivings, which I freely admit; Blair, with better information, was apparently much more concerned than was I. I wonder when he’ll admit that, whatever the rights or wrongs of invading Iraq (I remain in favour of the idea), the planning was too weak to sign on for this particular version of it.
Sure, the Americans would have ploughed on regardless without the UK contribution of troops, but that’s just something that the UK would have to bear. Forget all that stuff about a friend’s duty involving telling a friend when they’re wrong — it’s true, but the UK and USA are countries, not drinking buddies — the key fact is that UK interests are not particularly likely to be well-served by signing onto missions that the PM considers to be ill-planned.
Win or lose (as I have often repeated, I hope ‘win’ and support increased efforts to achieve it), we have to make the most out of this farrago by learning what was, and wasn’t, done right. For that exercise to be worth anything, we must first set aside pride and evaluate which was which.