“Bush and Blair, and the prime minister of Japan, and Berlusconi, these people are criminals, and they are responsible for mass murder in the world, for the war, and for the occupation” rails Galloway. Although a comparison with Berlusconi’s morals might be uncharitable, gorgeous George’s accusation against the ‘Bush/Blair axis’ has resonance in newspaper columns and at dinner parties across the land. 

“Regardless if Osama is killed or survives, the awakening has started, praise be to God, ” Bin Laden declared less than 3 months after 9/11. Sadly, he was right.

But the Stop the War agenda, lamenting blood on our hands for the sake of oil, is too simplistic.  It conceals more than it reveals.  “Setting the record straight” means re-examining the unheard case for the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, in terms of the War on Terror, and looking hard at Afghanistan and the wider conflict. Crucially, understanding the history means we can make a serious attempt to make sense of where we are now.

We need to examine that past- of the Bush administration’s moral vision, and of initial failure in Iraq tempered by recent success.  If you rub your eyes, blink, and look at the political and military realities at the start of 2008, there is reason for cautious optimism both in Iraq and, in a wider context, in the War on Terror. However, we must be realistic about the enemy we face, the tools at our disposal, and the length of the road ahead.

The rise of radical Islamism is the key starting point. Fundamentally, this is not a fight that we have courted. Instead, it is one forced upon us by a movement which has successfully combined theology with the anger of excluded young men.

It was the 1960s and 70s that saw violence first justified in theological terms that were distinctively modern, crucially by Sayyid Qutb, in his manifesto for jihad, Milestones, born out of the ferment of post-Nasser Egypt. The 1980s provided the catalyst, as the mujahideen fought the Soviets in Afghanistan. During this, the tribal badlands of Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province became a recruiting ground and a staging post for foreign fighters.
Islamabad colluded by allowing the indoctrination of scores of poor young men in the free ‘education’ offered in the madrassas, as long as their anger was directed away from Pakistan, in Kashmir and in Afghanistan. Hands-on support was offered not-so-covertly by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and indirectly by CIA dollars, spent under the logic of the Cold War.

The 1990s saw the incubation of the Islamist networks, as a jihadist diaspora copied habits of violence learnt in Afghanistan in various local conflicts, in Chechnya, the Balkans, Algeria, Indonesia, Somalia and a host of other murderous smaller-scale insurgencies.
The 1990s also saw the establishment of training camps, crucially in the sanctuary provided by the Taliban, to teach aspiring young mujahideen basic military skills. ‘Fly to Pakistan, make your way to Peshawar, and there someone will take you across the border,’ recruits learnt in the radical mosques that still serve as recruiting centres in major cities across the world.
The warning signs were there, in the abortive 1993 attack on the World Trade Centre, the East African embassy bombings of 1998, and the attack on the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000, all orchestrated by the now trademark suicide bombers. But these went largely unnoticed, until Al-Qaeda burst into global consciousness with its decisive act of provocation: 9/11.

The accusation is often made that Bush should have recognised 9/11 for just that, a provocation of no long-term significance.  Following the successful campaign in Afghanistan in late 2001 he should have left the war on terror to the intelligence community. Discrete police work, in alliance with host nations, would have been sufficient to roll up the Islamist networks. Invading Iraq was,  by this argument, doing exactly what Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri had planned, and served only to spread chaos, making growing conditions perfect for Al-Qaeda.

This accusation fails to do justice to the real case for war in Iraq. There is, sadly, no question that the urgency of the need for war against Iraq was, in public pronouncements by both US and UK politicians, based on the imminent threat posed by WMDs. Sadly, again, it is also clear that the intelligence professionals were pressured into asserting knowledge of WMDs that went beyond what the evidence actually showed.
However, the public pronouncements by the neo-cons in Washington in 2002 and 2003 repeatedly made a far-reaching, profoundly moral and pragmatic justification for regime change in Baghdad.  The aim was “to advance liberty and peace in that regime” (Bush), or to give “the freedom loving peoples of the region a chance to promote the values that can bring lasting peace” (Cheney).
Pious rhetoric, perhaps, but the policy documents of the Project for the New American Century, the leading neo-con think-tank, give the contours of a substantial iceberg below the waterline of Bush’s national addresses.

By creating a stable, democratic regime in the heart of the Middle East, the conditions could be set for organic change across the region, as ‘the-man-in-the-souk’ would realise that liberty is an accessible reality.  As individuals looked across the border and realised that the Arab world had a free, prosperous, democratic regime in its midst, so the pressure would grow for the monarchies and dictatorships to reform, and govern in the interests of the people and not the princes. This would not happen overnight, but given success in Iraq in 5 or 10 years, then change could be seen in 20 or 30 years more widely.
The swamps of economic, social, political and sexual repression and exclusion, so prevalent across the corrupt states of the Middle East, would thereby be drained, as the heady mix of democracy and prosperity took effect. In this way, the conditions under which the poisonous Islamist extremist ideology prospers would be denied. This would be real victory in the War on Terror.
‘And after all, America is particularly successful at nation-building’, said the neo-cons – ‘just look at Germany and Japan. So now that, in 9/11, we have a new Pearl Harbour, we should seize the casus belli and set about remaking the Middle East in our liberal image. Iraq is particularly eligible for regime change, because it is governed by a dictator universally acknowledged as despicable, has a tradition of secularism, and has oil to pay for its rebuilding,’ was the prevailing sentiment.

Whether you agree or not, the neo-con vision is long-term, and is based on the moral superiority of a pluralist, open society. It accepts short-term pain, to address the root problem of the conditions that cause Islamism to flourish, rather than merely pursuing the people who are trying to blow us up.

The claim that Saddam harboured Al-Qaeda was always spurious.  But by being so obviously false, it obscured the long-term connection between Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) and the War on Terror. OIF is concerned with addressing the repressive conditions so prevalent in the Middle East that has made the War on Terror necessary in the first place.

The claim that Saddam harboured Al-Qaeda was always spurious.  But by being so obviously false, it obscured the long-term connection between Operation Iraqi Freedom and the War on Terror.

The tragedy of Iraq has not been the immorality of the invasion in March 2003, but the failure to plan for ‘Phase IV’ and the appointment of incompetent leaders to Baghdad in 2003 and 2004. Key among these were Jay Garner and Paul Bremer, the first two heads of the Coalition Provisional Authority, and Lt Gen Ricardo Sanchez, the first senior US commander.
Three disastrous decisions had a major effect in generating an insurgency in late 2003.  ‘De-Baathification’ stripped out the middle management who make society work. However tenuously, in Saddam’s Iraq, there was electricity and rubbish collection. Secondly, the instruction that all Iraqi soldiers and policemen should leave their uniform and go home instantly created 100,000 men with no salary, hungry families, a gun, and lingering resentment.
Thirdly, the US State Department was addicted to Friedman over Keynes, regardless of the unique post-invasion economic situation. This meant that large capital sums were not spent on cash-for-work type projects capable of giving unemployed Iraqis something to do, and thereby dignity and money. Instead, large contracts with American firms were favoured, taking months to be signed, and even longer to translate into change on the ground.

But where are we now? The key event since 9/11 was another Al-Qaeda provocation: the ‘Golden Mosque’ bombing in Samarra, in February 2006. A Shia shrine, it was this that ignited the always volatile Sunni/Shia sectarian divide over the summer of 2006. Imagine the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral scattered over London for comparison.
Civilian casualty levels rose inexorably, peaking at over 3,000 in February 2007. The vast majority of these were a result of Iraqi-on-Iraqi violence, particularly the feared death squads ‘cleaning out’ mixed Baghdad neighbourhoods.

The troop surge was Washington’s last throw of the dice, bringing total US troops in the country up from 132,000 to 168,000.  This has undoubtedly had a calming effect in Baghdad, and casualty levels have now dropped to those not seen since early 2005. But it remains the case that the military can only ‘hold the ring’ to enable the Iraqis to do politics. The genie of sectarianism must be coaxed back into the bottle.
And it is here that there is cautious − very cautious − ground for optimism. Late August 2007 saw the ‘Battle for Karbala’. The significance of this was largely missed in public discussion. In it, the Shia prime minister Maliki faced down the men of the radical Shia cleric Moqtada Al-Sadr, on their home territory, with the increasingly effective Iraqi army.  Sadr subsequently called a 6-month ceasefire for the Jaysh Ar Mahdi, the militia he controls. If Maliki has the political strength not to be held hostage by extremist Shia factions, he may yet be strong enough to shape the tricky detail of policy on hotly contested issues on a non-sectarian basis, like the national division of oil wealth.
With this is the remarkable change that has occurred in the Sunni heartlands in 2007. Tribal leaders have now recognised that reconciliation with the Shia is their only long-term hope, and have turned against Al-Qaeda, creating local militias dubbed the ‘Awakening Councils’.

What both these indicate is that the Iraqis might − just possibly − be beginning to recognise that neither the Shia nor the Sunni can be the winner that takes all, because the other side has too much to lose. Compromise is required − this may finally be the prolonged, painful birth of a genuine political process.
All this could change, of course. If the progress won in the last 6 months is not consolidated by the summer, a return to sectarian violence may result. ‘Victory’ is no longer defined solely by the heady rhetoric of liberation.
The National Security Council’s September 2007 report instead sought to point the way towards drawdown in Iraq, whilst avoiding three worst case scenarios: humanitarian catastrophe, a failed state providing sanctuary for international terrorism, or a regional conflict.
The last is clearly looking to the danger posed by Iran; here, not so much the spectre of mullahs with their fingers on a nuclear button, but the more realistic and therefore more dangerous possibility of a puppet-Shia administration in Baghdad taking orders from Tehran.
What this points towards is the likely shape of an enduring American presence in Iraq, if US casualties rise again or a post-Bush administration loses patience. A substantial contingent of US Army forces (at minimum divisional strength) would likely be maintained. Such a force could intervene decisively in Baghdad against any attempted coup, and could be swiftly reinforced by designated reserves airlifted in from the US, or driving up from Kuwait.
Additionally, small teams of embedded personnel would continue to work alongside the Iraqi military; they would call in close air support in tactical situations as required, and continue to build logistic and training capacity across the Iraqi military as a whole.
The US Embassy political mission would retain its role: both representing US interests and helping build capacity in the Iraqi ministries. However, this would be hunkered down behind the formidable walls of the largest embassy building in the world − currently being built on the banks of the Tigris in Baghdad’s Green Zone.
Finally, the existing, substantial and extremely successful apparatus used to hunt Al-Qaeda leaders would almost certainly retain its current freedom of action. This consists of special forces, cued on to targets by a sophisticated array of tactical and strategic intelligence-gathering assets. Agent running, communications intercepts, and long-loiter imagery gathering systems such as Predator all contribute to building a general picture.
But often the most important intelligence comes from exploitation at the scene of capture – seizing computers, mobile telephones and paper documents, as well as tactical interrogation of detainees. This task force would continue to ensure that the terrorist leadership in Iraq must always be watching their backs
The fourfold structure above could be maintained indefinitely, and would ensure that however bad things got for the average Iraqi, US strategic interests were safe-guarded.

But what of the prospect for the wider war on terror? More than anything, Afghanistan shows the simultaneous necessity, but also limited utility, of military force. Men who are willing to kill and have a vision of how society ought to be, will only be stopped by other men, also willing to kill, with a different vision of how society ought to be. Such is the uncomfortable truth of the ‘state of nature’ between societies; violence is the bottom line.  We have an advantage in this: the power for coercion of the modern, high technology, professional military has to be seen to be believed — our ‘hard’ power is nearly unstoppable, and it is the first guarantee of our liberties.

But to resolve conflict, coercion cannot be the final answer; it is recruiting the soft power of ideas and money that proves the harder but more effective solution.

But to resolve conflict, coercion cannot be the final answer; it is recruiting the soft power of ideas and money that proves the harder but more effective solution.

NATO’s problem in Afghanistan is lack of troops. With only 41,700  ‘boots on the ground’ across the country, fighting the Taliban has been termed “whack-a-mole”. Whenever you chase them out of one area, they pop up in another, and there are never enough coalition forces to hold the ground that has been taken.  The Canadians, having cleared the volatile and deadly Panjwayi District in Kandahar Province in 2006 and again in 2007, have compared it to ‘mowing the lawn’.
NATO’s hard power is indispensable in establishing the space in which the Government of Afghanistan can begin to govern in remote, traditionally lawless areas.  But it is the effective application of soft power, in terms of the tangible benefits of roads, hospitals, schools, governance, and corruption-free policing, that actually achieves the effect we are seeking: that of building a stable country.  And this takes much longer.
There is strong evidence that the Afghans themselves strongly approve of the NATO mission − with a 71% approval rating in a September poll by the BBC. The challenge NATO faces is to ensure that the ‘soft’ benefits of our presence are seen quickly enough – or popular consent will be eroded, possibly irreparably.

Musa Qaleh is the case study.  When British troops walked out in October 2006, it was under a deal brokered with the local elders that they would keep ‘irreconcilable’ Taliban out of the town.  Reports of the town ‘falling’ in February 2007 conjured up certain images: bearded men on Toyota pick-ups, with staring, kohl-lined eyes high on both tea laced with opium and the blood lust of summary executions; brandishing RPGs and AK-47s and roaming around the desert, about to swoop on to Kandahar, à la 1996.

The reality was less dramatic. A prominent ‘reconcilable’ Talib was persuaded by his more radical brother, who had just narrowly survived an attempt on his life by a NATO air strike, to contest for power with those local elders who had signed up to the deal a few months earlier.  The financial reward of controlling the local, important drug bazaar also looms in the background. ‘Control’ of the town was established by holding the local elders hostage, daubing some graffiti in the District Centre, and killing some people believed to be spies.
So British troops held off, until ‘re-taking’ Musa Qaleh this last December − this time with Afghan forces in the lead, and a plan for consolidating control.

Playing “whack-a-mole” is not just costly in terms of coalition lives, but also costly in terms of consent by the local populace, whose homes and fields are the ones that get bombed.  Fighting is the easy part; the politics and development afterwards is harder, so it only makes sense to “go kinetic” and start shooting when there is a thought-through “non-kinetic” package to follow-up.

So the NATO mission in Afghanistan is a race against time.  Can the development project progress fast enough to counter the loss of consent caused by persistent fighting? But it is also a race that will take a long time. Everything indicates that this will be a prolonged campaign, 10-20 years at minimum. The question has become: although eminently winnable, do the democracies of the West have the stomach to see Afghanistan through?

The conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq have their own specific complexities, and both seem set for the long-term. A phrase fashionable in US military circles at one stage was the label, “The Long War”. To show how seriously they mean this, the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review set about the restructuring of the American military to address the need for discrete, smaller-scale ‘expeditionary’ and asymmetric interventions across the globe.

The reason why this will take some time lies in the root cause of radical Islamism: a heady mix of theology, with a perception of loss of honour by Arab nations, exacerbated by widespread but local grievances, which causes young men to think it noble to be a suicide bomber.This is a structural problem, and will not go away in the short term. Bin Laden’s narrative of cosmic struggle, couched in the resonant appeals to the Caliphate and loyalty to the umma, the global Muslim community, appeals widely.

It is for this reason that Her Majesty’s Government’s counter-terrorist strategy, labelled ‘Contest’, starts with “prevent”. It is worth quoting this at length. It seeks to tackle the “radicalisation of individuals” by:

• tackling disadvantage and supporting reform by addressing structural problems in the UK and overseas that may contribute to radicalisation, such as inequalities and discrimination
• deterring those who facilitate terrorism and those who encourage others to become terrorists by changing the environment in which the extremists and those radicalising others can operate
• engaging in the battle of ideas by challenging the ideologies that extremists believe can justify the use of violence, primarily by helping Muslims who wish to dispute these ideas to do so.

Only subsequent to this do we pursue terrorists, protect ourselves and our infrastructure, and prepare for the worst case scenarios.

“Regardless if Osama is killed or survives, the awakening has started, praise be to God, ” Bin Laden declared less than 3 months after 9/11. Sadly, he was right. MI5 now reports that it is tracking 2,000 individuals, 200 terrorist networks and 30 active plots in Britain, plus a significant number of sympathisers.
The scandal is that the public debate in Britain has been so infected by post-Iraq suspicion that, when Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller reported these figures for the first time, the Today Programme presenters seriously asked whether this was simply a bid for more funding. Only a deep myopia about the history of global Islamism could allow her warning not to be taken seriously.

But cautious optimism is warranted. The West has and will absorb the damage of terrorist spectaculars, so long as a nexus of rogue states, WMDs and Al-Qaeda-inspired cells are prevented. The longer the conflict goes on, the more radical Islamism’s true colours are revealed: deeply anti-libertarian, founded on anger and resentment, murderous, with no long-term plan for political reform other than seizure of power and merciless oppression.

Such is the lesson in miniature from the ‘Sunni triangle’ in Iraq — those to whom Al-Qaeda’s ideology immediately appeals, nevertheless turn their backs when they meet it at first hand.

So Bush and Blair should be more than piqued by Galloway’s accusation. Tough times are undoubtedly still to come, particularly for Iraq around the draw-down this coming summer as the surge runs out. There will be a moment to ‘pull the troops out’, either because we have bequeathed two stable regimes in the Middle East, or because the fighting is interminable and not worth coalition lives. But, right now, the West’s need is for some steadfast moral resolve.