General Sir Richard Dannatt caused a storm which he plainly wasn't expecting. He told a journalist that the presence of British troops in Southern Iraq 'exacerbates the security problems'. Today The Guardian talks to soldiers on the ground about this. The reporter elicits this quote from Lt Col Simon Brown:
'We are in a tribal society in Basra and we are in effect one of these tribes. As long as we are here the others will attack us because we are the most influential tribe. We cramp their style.'
This is the most profound statement I have read in the aftermath of Dannatt's remarks.
Saturday, October 14, 2006
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A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
Did you note the technique used by Blair to respond to General Dannatt's comments? Faced with someone of authority expressing beliefs inconsistent with his own, Blair simply asserted that he was in complete agreement with General Dannatt. Rather than attempting to refute those claims, he effectively dismissed them, and dissolved them into his own.
ReplyDeleteI didn't see that, Gordon. I have always thought that one of the key points about Blair is that he always believes what he says when he says it. This seems to get him through most situations. I think there is a quiet garden in his mind that he cultivates nightly.
ReplyDeleteBut isn't that the nature of a good actor, Bryan? Tony does sincerity very well. For a look at bad acting, what do you make of this?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysI4In3eyNo
Highly recommend Ahmed S. Hashim's Insurgency and Counter-Insurgency in Iraq (Hurst 2006). He has been to Iraq repeatedly as part of the Commander's Advisory Group of Centcom and is a professor at the US Naval War College. What he describes and analyses is so bleak that one can hardly read it. A bit like walking across spilled petrol and not knowing whether to go back or forwards. Far more illuminating than General Dannatt's commonplace observations, although what the General said about British culture and warfare needs developing. We'll be so lawyered up in a few years thazt we won'tr be able to fight a war. I'm not sure we need 'onward Christian soldiers' in view of the US marine chaplain who told the men about to storm Fallujah that they were 'instruments of the Lord's righteous mercy'.....Anyway, try Hashim's book and realise how these decisions are all impossibly difficult. Are your knees dry yet Bryan?
ReplyDeleteI've never understood why people think it explains away Blair's lying by saying that they are sure he believed it when he said it. And he is forgiven for telling lies because he had no idea they were lies and anyway he didn't intend to mislead anybody when he told them. That's all right then.
ReplyDeleteIf this is true then surely he must be suffering from some abnormality of mind so serious that he is unfit to hold any office of trust, never mind the one he does hold. Or of course he's just a shameless and habitual liar, in which case the same should apply.
Does anybody agree that it's a bit galling for the rest of us, who are being increasingly prosecuted for crimes where the lack of intention is no defence, that the man who occupies the highest office in the land should be exonerated by using the very defence denied the rest of us.
And I agree Gordon McCabe, what a marvellously clever way of dealing with the General's criticism and, in truth probably, courageous treason, by absorbing it like a hydra. Hey presto! no disagreement, because I have absorbed your opinions and look, they've now disappeared. Brilliant. Surely this is strong evidence that Blair is not mad but bad and the claim to believe what he says when he says it is part of his badness.
My view is that he has a bit missing - the bit that distinguishes right from wrong - and he has more of it missing than most people who have a similar deficiency.
But, come on guys, what other kind of person could have persuaded the British people to elect a Labour government, not once, but three times in a row. No wonder he's still in office. The longer the better for those of us who think that to believe in socialism is a manifestation of an emotional disorder.
I'm not sure that General Dannat was unaware of the furore that his comments would cause. He has backed away from the position adopted in his first interview but I think that he (and the rest of the British Army) are secretly delighted that the point has now been made publicly.
ReplyDeleteI can't help thinking that, if you could interview Clive or Kitchener or Gordon, they would think the Iraq venture was going swimmingly. I'm not suggesting they would be right. I'm merely suggesting that's how it would appear from their perspective.
ReplyDelete"I think there is a quiet garden in his mind that he cultivates nightly." And the night soil, I take it, is spread by Alistair Campbell?
ReplyDeleteAnd the parts of the garden which possess an uphill gradient are tended, no doubt, by Peter Mandelson.
ReplyDeleteSound point, Frank. My post wasn't intended to be for or against the Iraq invasion and its aftermath, it was about the essential confrontations involved. Whereas the old colonial generals would have seen such a war as the necessary and just imposition of a higher order, our contemporary soldiers have no such luxury. They are relativised - hence the produndity I saw in Lt Col Brown's remark.
ReplyDeleteI suppose, Bryan, that the next question would be whether such relativisation helps or hinders policy - either its formulation or implementation. I should think not. I doubt if the "other tribes" involved think the way Lt. Col. Brown does. So his relativisation might actually lead him to misconstrue the situation.
ReplyDeleteI meant to say that "I should think it would not help." The fingers are faster than the brain.
ReplyDelete