Fairweather, Jack, A War Of Choice, The British In Iraq 2003-9, Jonathan Cape, 2011
Jack Fairweather did an outstanding job describing England’s role in the Iraq War. He presents a story of a prime minister who believed he was on a moral mission when confronting Iraq. That led him to ignore the warnings he received about the problems with the U.S. war plans believing everything would work out. When things quickly went awry neither Prime Minister Tony Blair nor the British military provided any real leadership and quickly settled upon getting out of Iraq as quickly as possible which ended up dragging into a four year process. It was a complete fiasco.
A War Of Choice begins with Prime Minister Tony Blair’s motivation for invading Iraq. Immediately after 9/11 the PM saw Iraq as an international threat that needed to be dealt with. He promised President Bush his unqualified support for any effort against Saddam. He believed confronting the Iraqi dictator was a moral and liberal cause that the world would rally around.
The author points out there were immediate problems. 1st Blair thought his support for Bush would allow London to influence U.S. policy but that wasn’t true. The UK was never seen as a partner. The only victory the premier could point to was that he convinced Bush to go to the United Nations to argue his case against Saddam. 2nd Blair was afraid that the press would report that he wanted to go to war and therefore blocked planning for the conflict to try to stop that from happening. 3rd the PM was repeatedly warned that Washington was not doing its job to prepare for postwar Iraq and did nothing about it hoping that things would change when they never did. Fairweather ultimately blames Blair for the Iraqi War because of his lack of leadership. He believed what he was doing was right but never took the steps necessary to make it a success.
The majority of the book is about how the British military struggled in Iraq. As soon as the invasion was over there were divisions within the army about whether to quickly withdraw or to make a long term commitment to Iraq. It was decided to pull out but then the UK agreed to run two southern provinces Basra and Maysan and provide staff for other governorates. For the first year there was an effort to create local governments and start reconstruction projects but they were constantly faced by opposition from Iraqi locals, political parties and militias. The army and civilians were attacked again and again. The British then followed the U.S. lead and decided to withdraw to large bases and train the Iraqi security forces so it could leave. That was complicated by the quick turnover of military commanders half of which wanted to go on the offensive which never worked out because they didn’t have the support of London or the Iraqi government. The UK ended up being isolated in bases while constantly being attacked by militias. In 2007 the U.S. changed strategy with the Surge and asked the English to stay so the south wasn’t conceded to militias and London agreed. Many soldiers believed they were just targets during this period. Fairweather blames the military leadership for this ad hoc policy. There was never a detailed strategy laid out for how the UK was going to deal with Iraq and then when the decision was made to pull out it was up to the ever changing commanders to come up with how to do it rather than getting direction from London.
The overall impression is that the British never knew what it was doing in Iraq. Blair was filled with idealism and didn’t provide any kind of serious plans. The military did no better leaving strategy to individual generals who constantly changed. There was not a single positive thing the UK left behind from its involvement in Iraq. It didn’t influence the Bush administration. It didn’t rebuild Iraq. It didn’t develop the Iraqi forces. It didn’t defeat the militias who came to run the southern part of the country.
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