The Osterley Times: Bush and Blair isolated as criticism of war grows

Bush and Blair are either being stubbornly resistant to any idea of changing course in Iraq or they simply lack the wherewithal to come up with any alternative plan. Either way, with each passing day, both look like increasingly isolated figures spouting a party line that even their own parties have given up as defunct.

Now, in the face of inertia from the planners of the war, it seems that everyone has a better idea of where we should go from here. "Staying the course" has lost it's selling power.

A leaked report by the Iraq Study Group, chaired by former US secretary of state James Baker, a close friend of the Bush family, paved the way for a large-scale withdrawal of US forces and a dramatic shift of US policy.

It suggested that instead of the "stay the course" policy, President Bush could extricate the US from the quagmire of Iraq by removing US forces to bases outside Iraq. In an even more spectacular U-turn, they are believed to suggest that Iran and Syria could be invited to co-operate in the stabilisation of lawless Iraq.

That was implicitly rejected by the White House spokesman Tony Snow, who said the administration would not "subcontract" management of the war to outside advisers. But two high-profile Republican senators separately called for a change of course.

"We clearly need a new strategy," said Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, a possible 2008 presidential candidate.

John Warner, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Iraq was "drifting sideways" and that if there was no improvement within two or three months, then policy would have to change.

Baker is to be congratulated for at least formulating a plan, Hagel and Warner - like most Republican "rebels" call for "a new strategy" and a "change of policy" without ever having the courage to explain what that changed policy might look like. This is because, having attacked the Democrats for wanting to "cut and run" the Republicans have given themselves no honourable way to extricate themselves from their Iraqi quagmire.

So now they propose a change, without saying that this change is actually the very thing they have been attacking for the past couple of years.

However, one also gets the feelings that public opinion is forcing them to rethink their strategy.

Bush's approval is at an all time low and 64% of the public believe that the Iraq war was a mistake.

Of course any change in the American position will immediately effect Blair's stance on the war. At the moment he clings absurdly to the old arguments and one gets the feeling that when all is said and done Blair will be standing totally alone next to George W insisting petulantly that they were both right and that the rest of us are wrong.

Blair had to ignore what General Sir Richard Dannatt said earlier this week in order to pretend that he agreed with him. But even people like John Reid are starting to admit publicly that we are actually contributing to the radicalisation of young Muslims by our campaign in Iraq.

Sir Richard said the presence of British troops in Iraq was exacerbating the security situation. On Monday night, the Home Secretary, John Reid also broke ranks by admitting for the first time at a private meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party that foreign policy was contributing to the radicalisation of young Muslims in Britain.

Yesterday, at his first Downing Street press conference since he announced that he will be gone within a year, Mr Blair resisted the calls for a change of strategy. He appeared to contradict Mr Reid, describing such arguments as absurd.

"You can't end up in a situation where you say, when we are on the side of ordinary, decent Muslims in Iraq or Afghanistan who want their own democratic government, when we are there at the behest of those governments with a full UN resolution, that we, when we are protecting those against people who are driving car bombs into markets and mosques and so on, that we somehow are causing their extremism.

"It's absurd and you won't defeat this extremism until you take that argument head on. And the real problem we've got is it has got to be taken head on in the Muslim community as well."

There is not only an air of desperation in Blair's clinging to his belief that no action he takes contributes to the rise of extremism, there is also - to use his own words back at him - an air of absurdity.

Blair now has to ignore the warnings of his army chiefs and every report that has been published in order to claim that there is no link between our actions and the rise of extremism across the Muslim world. It is the same fantastical stubbornness that led him to claim there was no link between 7-7 and the Iraq war.

It's almost as if Blair can't face the consequences of what he has actually done and instead insists on clinging to his own highly selective map of reality. But that is becoming a more and more isolated position and less and less people are willing to be associated with it.

One thing is clear though. And it was always going to be so. When Bush sinks, Blair will be standing next to him; spectacularly alone, spectacularly loyal, spectacularly out of tune with the mood of the time.

That will be his legacy for blindly supporting neo-con policy.

How the big wheels in the Bush administration have turned full circle

The CIA Man

"Iraq is now what Afghanistan was in the late-1970s and throughout the 80s into the 90s, and that's an insurgent magnet, if you will, a mujahedin magnet, only much, much worse."

Michael Scheuer, Former Head of the CIA's Bin Laden Unit

The Neo-Con

"The US objective in Iraq has failed... Our mission has failed because Iraqi animosities have proved uncontainable by an invading army of 130,000. And the administration has, now, to cope with failure."

William Buckley, Conservative Editor of The National Review

The General

"The commitment of our forces to this fight was done with a casualness and swagger that are the special province of those who have never had to execute these missions - or bury the results."

Retired Marine Lt Gen Gregory Newbold

The Administration Man

"We didn't have enough troops on the ground. We didn't impose our will. And as a result, an insurgency got started and... got out of control."

Colin Powell, Former Joint Chief of Staff and US Secretary of State

The Adviser

"There'll probably be some things in our report that the administration might not like... I personally believe in talking to your enemies. Neither the Syrians nor the Iranians want a chaotic Iraq."

James Baker, Former US Secretary of State