Iraq: voters want British troops home by end of year

The British public have had enough of the Iraq war and want British troops home by the end of this year. Yes, you read that right...

They want the troops home within the next nine weeks even if they have not completed the mission and even if Washington want them to stay.

It's a startling rejection of the Bush and Blair mantra that we should only leave Iraq when the job is done and reflects, I think, a belief that the war in Iraq is lost and that there is nothing to be gained from losing the lives of more British soldiers in a battle that we can never hope to win.

In a sign that public opinion is hardening against Britain's military presence in Iraq, 61% of voters say they want British troops to leave this year, even if they have not completed their mission and Washington wants them to stay.

Only 30% now back the prime minister's commitment to keep troops in Iraq as long as is considered necessary.

Almost half of those questioned - 45% - want British forces pulled out immediately and a further 16% want them to leave by the end of the year, whether or not the US asks the British government to keep them on. When the Guardian last questioned voters on the issue in September 2005, 51% backed troop withdrawal with 41% arguing that British forces should stay in Iraq until the security situation in the country had improved.

The British foreign secretary, Margaret Beckett, further emphasised the scale of our folly of intervening in Iraq by admitting that Iraq might now choose to partition itself into three separate entities rather than carry on as one country. So there we have it. The British foreign secretary is now openly speculating on whether or not Iraq is about to disintegrate as a direct result of our intervention there. Of course, she attempted to make such an event honourable:

"That is very much a matter for the Iraqis. They have had enough of people from outside handing down arbitrary boundaries and arbitrary decisions," she told BBC Radio 4's The World At One.

Asked if historians may judge that Iraq had been a foreign policy disaster for Britain, she said: "Yes, they may. Then again, they may not."

Ah, so if Iraq disintegrates we should see it as the Iraqis freeing themselves from a British colonial past where arbitrary boundaries were imposed. So it's not so much the collapse of a nation as it is the expression of the new found freedoms that our "liberation" has brought them.

See how she's done that? This woman could sell ice cream to Eskimos. There's a silver lining to every cloud in Beckett's world.

What's startling about this comment is that it illustrates how very real the utter collapse of Iraq has become. After all, this is coming from the British foreign secretary. She's not known for wild speculation, and she's not running this past us because it's something that's just occurred to her.

She's laying the foundations of the government's line if Iraq collapses.

It used to be that we would only leave Iraq when we had installed a democracy and peace had been established. That then metamorphosed into we would hand "control of security" over to the Iraqis, meaning they could sort the bloody mess out themselves. Now, we are actually preparing the public for the disintegration of Iraq as a nation and having the gall to pretend that this is somehow a liberating act for the people.

And we need to wait for the final judgement of history to work out whether or not this was a foreign policy disaster? I think not, Margaret. I think not.

How many Iraqis have died for this failed venture? How many British troops, how many American soldiers? Let us never forget that they were going to build a stable democracy that was to have a domino effect throughout the Middle East. Only by looking at their original intentions can we see the sheer scale of their mishandling of the war and the chasm between their original plans and where we now find ourselves.

They invaded a country whose culture they barely understood, and they did so based on lies. Now they seek to make it's collapse somehow, if not part of the big plan, then at least a liberating event.

The Iraqis will be choosing to reject "arbitrary boundaries". Here on planet Earth that's also known as civil war. As Rumsfeld famously opined, "freedoms messy". Margaret Beckett is preparing us for the fact that it's all about to get a whole lot messier. But we must always remember what we are looking at:

"Freedom" and the rejection of "arbitrary boundaries."

In future, when we are watching all those dead Iraqis, we must never forget how lucky they are to have this great chance to express themselves.

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tag: Iraq, withdrawal, pull-out, democracy, "Staying the course", "Stay the course", Margaret Beckett, disintegration, collapse, UK, polls, 61%,