It's over....isn't it?

‘But what became of it at last?’ quoth little Peterkin.

‘Why that I cannot tell’ said he,

‘But t’was a famous victory,

So it’s over.

Nine years after a war that was expected to last 6 months the last of the American military has marched out of Iraq. I watched the flag lowering ceremony that was boycotted by all the movers and shakers including the President of Iraq. It was not a triumphal occasion. It was very sad.

It cost the lives of 4,500 US servicemen and women, with more than 20,000 wounded, many of them blinded or crippled for life. 62% of wounded had brain damage; 25% of the whole force have required medical or mental health treatment. The Iraqi death toll was in excess of 100,000. There were 1.8 million refugees.

The US Marines lost a quarter of its strength through death and injury.

The US Government says it cost $800 billion. Actually, the true cost is more like $3.5 trillion when hospitalisation and pensions for the wounded are taken into account, and mostly on borrowed money.

So what do they leave behind?

A country that is 172 out of 185 on the Transparency International corruption index.

A country racked with ethnic and sectarian strife and divisions that under Saddam was noted for religious and ethnic tolerance as long as you kept your nose out of politics..

A country of shattered lives, bereaved families, missing relatives, physical destruction, and a ruined economy.

A country at war with itself.

As Dubya said ‘Mission accomplished!’

So what was it all about?

I was working in Jamaica in the build-up to ‘shock and awe’. With total confidence I assured my Jamaican friends that it was all a game of bluff to keep Saddam in line. Iraq under him was the only secular state in the Gulf and a war would only open the door for the Islamists to walk through. Saddam had been rendered harmless to the West after we destroyed his ability to wage war in Gulf 1. There was no Iraqi connection with Al Qaeda; in fact Al Qaeda was the antithesis of the Iraqi regime. Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11. There was no casus belli.

We shall probably never know for sure what motivated Dubya to get into this morass. I guess that partly it was because after 9/11 he needed to frag some Arabs – any Arabs, no matter where they came from, and partly because he decided to carry on where his Dad left off. Blair joined in to polish his apple with the Yanks; he was adept at pissing up your back and telling you it was raining, so he had no problem about lying in his teeth to the House of Commons.

So the pair of them invented the WMD scare and all the crap about British bases in Cyprus being 45 minutes away from nuclear attack or some such porkies. But we might nab you yet, Tony. Leave of appeal has been granted to plead for an inquest into the strange death of Dr Kelly.

A luta continua!

And the jihadis have won important victories. They have cost us many of our basic freedoms through masses of anti-terrorist laws that are never applied for catching bombers but always for other reasons (i.e. the hopelessly one-side extradition treaty with the US that does not require prima facie evidence that an offence has even been committed let alone that the person named in the extradition warrant has committed one; as for the European Arrest Warrant, don’t get me started).

There is the scandal of Guantanamo Bay, and now Obama has signed through detention without trial of anybody suspected of terrorism (which simply means ‘anybody’ full-stop). Step forward, Joe McCarthy.

They sowed the wind and we reap the whirlwind.

We are still bogged down in a purposeless war in Afghanistan against people who have never done us any harm to get rid of Al Qaeda who decamped to Yemen and Somalia yonks ago.

The fat lady ain’t singing yet!