First, Dominate the Security Space
I’ve just been watching the trailer for No End In Sight, a documentary that looks at the wholesale incompetence and sheer recklessness that has led to the disaster that is Iraq today. The film examines the manner in which a group of men with little or no military experience made a series of flagrantly debilitating decisions - the use of insufficient troop levels, allowing the looting of Baghdad, the purging of professionals from the Iraqi government and the disbanding of the Iraqi military – largely created the insurgency and chaos that engulf Iraq today.
This is a discussion that is still needed and this film is - in my view - worth seeing, if you can. But I don’t want to stop on a simplistic anti-interventionist note, so can I also recommend Paddy Ashdown’s Swords And Ploughshares: Building Peace in the 21st Century which makes the case for interventionism, looks at modern peace-keeping missions and discusses how a country can be rebuilt. He points out, for example, that planning for post-war government in Germany began in 1943 - two years before the guns fell silent. By contrast, George Bush sacked the teams working on plans for post-Saddam Iraq just as US and British forces invaded in 2003.
Small wars are likely to become big ones and it is too dangerous to leave ‘failed states’ to sink on their own because they will bring their neighbours down with them. The armed forces, therefore, will find themselves increasingly taking part in these types of mission in the future. It would, therefore, be a good idea to agree ahead of time on the strategies required to avoid another Iraq-style disaster.
Sunday 01 Jul 2007 | Paul | New and Upcoming Films, Politics
