Miliband: We have alienated millions of Muslims over Iraq

David Miliband has had an attack of honesty and admitted that the attack on Iraq has alienated millions of Muslims towards the UK/US policy.

In a frank speech, he also admitted there could be no military solutions in Iraq and Afghanistan, saying the government had found it hard to win peace in such countries. He repeatedly said the government needed to learn lessons as it launched a second wave of foreign policy in which there would be greater reliance on stronger multilateral institutions. He also called for all Iraq's neighbours, including Syria and Iran, to be involved in negotiations on the future of Iraq, a position the Bush administration has opposed. He warned if such countries were not involved there was a serious danger that Sunni-Shia sectarian war in Iraq could spread throughout the Middle East.

Miliband would not have been allowed to make this speech without the approval of Gordon Brown, so we can take this as a message from Downing Street that the British position is changing.

"Whatever the rights and wrongs - and there have been both - we have got to focus on the future. We need to continue to support the development of an effective Iraqi security force. We need to keep our promise to all Iraqis that they will have an economic stake in the future of the country. And we need to work with all the neighbours of Iraq to reconcile Sunni and Shia to prevent the conflict first fragmenting the country and then spreading like a contagion across the Middle East."

So, we now have Downing Street openly calling for the inclusion of Syria and Iran in any Iraqi solution, a policy which the White House are vehemently opposed to. Indeed, Miliband has gone far enough to state that, despite the "surge", that the US military solution not only is not working, but that it cannot work.

"While we have won the wars, it has been harder to win the peace. The lesson is that while there are military victories there is never a military solution. There's only military action that creates the space for economic and political life."

Bush's allies are now openly fracturing around him and proposing policies which he has expressly ruled out, despite these policies having been recommended to him him by the bipartisan Baker report.

It is becoming quite clear that the British position, under Brown, is totally different from the position held under Blair, who basically believed that - for cohesion - the British should adopt whatever position Bush held.

Brown first withdrew British troops from Basra Palace and now is sending out Miliband to make the case that the current US policy is not working.

"I met young, educated, articulate people in their 20s and 30s who told me millions of Muslims around the world think we're not seeking to empower them, but to dominate them. So we have to stop and think.

Indeed. Bush will, of course, pay no attention as he is no longer even interested in victory. In his heart even he must know that this intervention is a failure, and his greatest ambition now is to pass this monumental failing to the next US administration.

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Tags: David Miliband, Iraq war, Muslims, Iraq, Afghanistan, war on terror