The foot soldiers are rebelling

The Guardian (UK)

August 25, 2003

The foot soldiers are rebelling

Getting into Iraq proved easy. Getting out is already a
nightmare

By Peter Preston

<http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/s...>

There is one grim, twisty rule about the politics of
death in action. It isn’t the bodybags coming home that
make the difference, sap the resolve and drain the
popularity. It is the suitcases packed and stacked on
the front porch for those who may replace the fallen.
The real pressure points are in the waiting and the
anticipation.

That’s why, whatever else is said this week after Basra
and more British deaths, no political player - not even
an MoD emailer - will start talking about troops out of
Iraq. Long years of a regular army doing its duty in
Northern Ireland have anaesthetised us to the drip-drip-
drip of casualties.

We give our boys in their flag-covered coffins a
suitably ceremonial farewell, but we do not question
their sacrifice. They did their duty, didn’t they? Why
sully their memory by asking whether that tour of duty
was strictly necessary? David Kelly rates a full
inquiry, but three dead military policemen on a dusty
road barely rate a second’s reflection. Just sound the
Last Post and move on.

Another death out in Iraq and then another don’t counsel
withdrawal. On the contrary, it seems, they merely mean
more of the same: more soldiers, more flak jackets, more
jut-jawed resolution.

Pause, though, and watch how the rhythms inside our so-
called coalition of the willing begin to beat out
dissonant tunes. Tony Blair, it is confidently asserted,
has more trouble over weapons of mass destruction than
George Bush because American public opinion, happy with
a job swiftly done, isn’t too fussed about bodged-up
intelligence assessments. It’s over, let it go. Score
one for a president supposedly cruising towards re-
election. Mire one for a prime minister where detail
counts.

But Bush, too, has his own special handicaps. Blair can
be up to his rictoid grin in Hutton sludge and still
enjoy a clear five-point lead over the Tories. George is
down (from 82% approval two years ago) to a 52-48 edge
over an unnamed generic Democrat (and is now actually
losing 48-45 on the Zogby poll’s regular question of
whether he or "a newcomer" should be next into the White
House).

Why this accelerating sinking feeling? The US economy,
after all, is showing signs of life. It’s high summer.
People ought to be feeling good. And we know foreign
affairs don’t shift votes, don’t we?
No: we don’t. Take another fascinating poll. A Scripps
Howard/Ohio University sampling of the mood in the
south. Here’s the region that, quite disproportionately,
recruits its sons and daughters to go to war. A region
of tradition and conservatism and military pride. A
region that salutes when the commander-in-chief comes
into the room. A region that backed Operation Iraqi
Freedom to the hilt.

And now? Now 42% of southerners question whether the war
was worth it. Now Bush approval is down from 69% to 57%
in a couple of months. Now 72% of the south’s black
population - America’s foot soldiers in the search for
Saddam - have turned against the involvement, a switch
of nearly 20% since May.

These aren’t small or insignificant movements. On the
contrary, they’re big and they fit together. As Nikos
Zahariadis, professor of political science at the
University of Alabama, says: "It seems paradoxical, but
many people from the south weren’t supporting Bush, they
were supporting the troops... and now they’re wondering
exactly when their husbands and sons and daughters are
coming home."

That’s the thing about strong regional identities and
communities. Those troops still in Baghdad, still taking
casualties, thought they’d be home long ago. But they’re
stuck. And those other units in waiting across the south
see the call coming for them, too. The entanglement is
specific and dangerous and apparently interminable. Did
Bush or Rumsfeld spell that out last March? Of course
not. Even this month, Bush was still setting himself
short, sweet deadlines. "We’ve got a year and a while
during my first term to make the world a more peaceful
place, and we’ll do it."

But the world is not, remotely, a more peaceful place.
The Middle East road map lies in a pile of rubble - just
like the UN headquarters in Baghdad. OK, so the "war
against terror" was always going to be long. How long is
long? How much more of this empty reassurance is any
electorate supposed to take without choking? These have
been an awful seven days for empty reassurances.
Is it too late to change course? Perhaps not. "Defeating
al-Qaida would not end the problem of proliferation,"
writes Madeleine Albright in the latest issue of Foreign
Affairs, "because al-Qaida is deadly even without
nuclear, chemical and biological arms.

But, meanwhile,
the nuclear programmes of North Korea and Iran are
driven by nationalism, not terrorism, and must be dealt
with primarily on that basis. September 11, the
administration’s eureka moment, caused it to lump
together terrorists and rogue regimes and to come up
with a prescription for fighting them - namely, pre-
emption - that frightens and divides the world at
precisely the moment US security depends on bringing
people together."

So wiser counsels may finally prevail. So the flaunting
of US power, the facile bullying of Iran and Syria, the
belief that the Pentagon can run the world may be over.
But is it already too late?
Why should we assume, for instance, that a UN-led force
in Iraq will not be sabotaged and attacked? That wasn’t
last week’s obvious lesson. Why should we assume that a
broader Nato coalition - as in Kosovo - will fit the
bill? Al-Qaida lives in Riyadh, not Pristina. Getting in
was easy. Getting out is already a nightmare, the
nightmare for George Bush. And Tony Blair’s deepest
worry after Hutton, curiously, may be what happens to
the faithful dog when he no longer hears his master’s
voice, singing the Song of the South.

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