IN 1967, before the Vietnam War got entirely out of hand, a respected Republican senator from Vermont made a very simple suggestion. “Why don’t we,” asked the 75-year-old George D. Aiken, “simply declare a victory and bring the boys home?”
At the time his question was considered rather bad form. Within the White House, the Pentagon and the State Department they were still confident that the war could be genuinely won. Only four or five years later, when General William C. Westmoreland had done his worst and US casualties already exceeded 50,000, did the less reverent spirits in Washington come to see that the suggestion by the grizzled old senator from the Green Mountains State had not been such a bad idea after all.
Already it is beginning to look the best solution for Iraq as well. Indeed, at the weekend three parliamentary foreign affairs experts — Robin Cook, Douglas Hurd and Menzies Campbell — came out with what was, in effect, just the same suggestion in The Times. Their proposal was that, come what may, the Americans and the British should leave Iraq in a year’s time when the UN mandate authorising their action is due to expire. (In writing what they did they were merely echoing something that Charles Kennedy had already said earlier in the same week.)
The trouble is that this eminently sensible view does not appear to be shared at all by the British Government, let alone the US Administration. On Thursday of last week the replies of the Leader of the House, Peter Hain, at business questions on Iraq, were notably robust in tone. He even appeared to promise that the only circumstances in which British forces would be withdrawn would be in response to an express request to that effect from the Iraqi Government. I do not know if that represents a fresh commitment, but it certainly strikes me as a terrifying one.
Just imagine what the result would have been if the Nixon Administration had made the same sort of promise to Marshals Thieu and Ky in Vietnam. Far from getting the mass of their troops out in the early 1970s — leaving the remnant of their military advisers, Marines and embassy staff to be lifted out by helicopter in 1975 — they would still presumably have been struggling on to win the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese people well into the 1980s.
It is the easiest thing in the world, as Dick Crossman observed when the British Army first went into Northern Ireland in 1969, to put soldiers into a situation; the difficulty arises when you want to get them out. And, as became clear in the Commons last Thursday, when the Lib Dems’ Shadow Leader of the House, Paul Tyler, put Hain under pressure on the point, there seems to be no answer to the question of what exactly the Government’s “exit strategy” is.
Tony Blair is entitled to feel relieved and encouraged by the turnout in Sunday’s election — but that, after all, merely marked the beginning of the process which will not reach its final stage until the end of the year (when the UN mandate will also be due to end). Sometime between now and then, the Government — along with the Americans or, if necessary, alone — must come up with a timetable for withdrawal.
Over this, President Bush’s position is, admittedly, stronger than the Prime Minister’s: he has already had his election — his last, as it happens — whereas Blair faces the challenge of trying to get through a four-week campaign in a couple of months’ time without giving a clue as to when we may expect British troops to come home. Let’s hope, anyway, that he manages to sound marginally more reasonable than his colleague, the Leader of the House did, with his defiant cry in the Commons: “Our motto is that we’re not quitters.”
The last thing the Government can want is to revive the whole Iraq controversy on the eve of the general election. But that must be counted a real danger unless it comes up with a plausible timetable for withdrawal well before it becomes the British public’s turn to go to the polls. For the trouble, as Robin Cook tirelessly points out, is that, far from providing a solution, the presence of British and US troops in Iraq has become a major part of the problem. Whether we like it or not, our forces have become synonymous with an occupying power and, sooner or later, even a quasi-legitimate Government in Iraq will have to stand on its own two feet.
There can be little doubt now that, as happened 50 years ago with Anthony Eden, Blair’s reckless venture into the turbulent politics of the Middle East will go down in history as the great disaster of his premiership. The most he can hope for is to contain the damage it has done to his reputation. To do that, he needs to offer the electorate a firm exit strategy.
Gagging order?
A fortnight ago the New Statesman proudly promised us: “Geoffrey Robinson on the Blair-Brown Wars”. But a week later there was no sign of any such piece. What do you suppose this means? That the MP for Coventry North West and former Paymaster-General in Brown’s Treasury team got his copy in late? That it proved not to be up to snuff? Or that it is simply being held over for another week? I’ll tell you what I think: that the word went out from his former boss that this was far too hot a topic for so close an ally of the Chancellor to touch, and that Robinson was warned off dealing with it even in his own magazine.
Housing benefit
David Blunkett is not the first former minister to retain his official residence after leaving the Government. Forty years ago another Labour worthy called Arthur Bottomley enjoyed the same perk. Having descended from being Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations to being Minister for Overseas Development, he was eventually fired by Harold Wilson in August 1967. So painful, though, was the scene in No 10 that the Prime Minister found himself unable to resist his old colleague’s entreaties that he and his wife would have nowhere to live. Six months later they were still to be found enjoying their palatial pad in Admiralty House.
Victim Vanunu
For years the BBC had an excellent correspondent in Israel named Michael Elkins. An American Jew by birth, he was an ardent Zionist by conviction — but that did not stop him from badly embarrassing the Israeli authorities with a major “scoop” on the pre-emptive action they had taken to destroy the Egyptian and Syrian Air Forces on the eve of the Six-Day War. Yet the Israeli Labour Government of those days took that sort of thing in its stride — a sharp contrast to today. The current Israeli Government’s effort to expel a BBC correspondent for his alleged part in the smuggling out of a taped interview with Mordechai Vanunu struck the most discordant note in the week of commemoration of the Holocaust. The victimisation of Vanunu has been a nasty story from the start, and this attempt to censor him months after his release from 18 years in jail for breaking the secret of Israel’s H-bomb only makes matters worse.
Join the debate
Send your comments to debate@thetimes.co.uk
