Not just Keegan, the Daily Telegraph has been out of kilter on Iraq from the beginning. IMO the coalition forces should have withdrawn when the interim Govt was set up or soon after the democratic elections. The West made the big mistake of interfering with true democracy in the beginning and insisted on their own puppet Govt. Iraq is never going to be a liberal democracy in the Western sense, but that probably wouldn't have gone down well with the electorate in US and UK. I increasingly feel that the electorate doesn't care any more. They just want the hell out. I don't see that as an option anymore. Blair and Bush have shown poor judgement throughout.
29 December 2004
Window of Opportunity in Iraq
By Gwynne Dyer
As the Bush administration often says, "failure is not an option"
in Iraq. It is an accomplished fact. The initial US goals in invading the
country are now completely unattainable, and the remaining uncertainties
are mostly to do with the timing of the American pull-out and the extent of
US humiliation. But is it possible that the Bush administration has
understood this, and is planning to declare a victory and leave within the
next six months?
A window of opportunity is about to open for an early American
withdrawal from Iraq. It would involve a handover to an elected Iraqi
government that will refuse to serve any of Washington's aims in the
region, but will not insist on publicly humiliating the Bush administration
on the way out. Will they have the wit to take the exit?
President Bush continues to call all the anti-American resistance
forces in Iraq "terrorists", thus implying that a withdrawal from Iraq
would somehow mean a defeat in his "war on terror," but he is also starting
to shift the blame for the mess there to the Iraqis themselves. "The
American people are taking a look at Iraq and wondering whether the Iraqis
are eventually going to be able to fight off these bombers and killers,"
he said last week -- as if Iraqis were proving unworthy of the efforts that
Americans have made to help them.
The window of opportunity is the election of 30 January. The
winner, barring a last-minute cancellation or massive fraud, will be the
United Iraqi Alliance, a candidates' list sponsored by Grand Ayatollah Ali
al-Sistani that includes all the strongest Shia parties and groups. Since
60 percent of Iraq's people are Shia Arabs and many of the 15-20 percent
Sunni Arab minority will not vote, this alliance will almost certainly win
a majority in the 275-member national assembly and choose the new
.government.
The last line?
It probably won't happen, in which case things will go from bad to
worse.
Full article
http://www.gwynnedyer.net/articles/Gwynne Dyer article_ Window of Opportunity.txt