THE killing of four British soldiers in Basra on Sunday with at least three seriously injured, and the killing of six US soldiers in the same period in northern Iraq, has underlined the fact that in Iraq the game is up for Bush and Blair.
What they require now, after the earthquake of the US mid-term election results, is a patch-up operation so that their troops can quit the country and perhaps avoid being run out of it.
In Afghanistan the situation is no better. There the puppet Karzai regime has turned around and told the British army that it will not stand for its local truce with the Taleban in the town of Nawzad in Helmand province, which has lasted for three weeks so far.
Karzai’s position is that British troops may well be able to quit the country, but that he will not, and the last thing that he needs is the British army making deals that allow the Taleban, his deadly rivals, to run the main towns of the province.
Yesterday, the totally discredited British Prime Minister spoke about turning to Iran and Syria for help with the Iraqi crisis.
It is said that his approach will be to make clear to Syria and Iran ‘the basis on which they can help the peaceful development of the Middle East rather than hinder it; and the consequences of not doing so’, a Blair aide said yesterday.
Who is he trying to kid. The US army has been defeated in Iraq. The British army, in the words of its leaders, is being destroyed in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Blair says that he is going to give Iran and Syria an offer that they cannot refuse, something like ‘help us out of the Iraqi quagmire or we will take military action against you’.
The truth is that he will be approaching Iran and Syria on his knees. Syria and Iran will agree to talks, of that there is little doubt. But they will demand concessions in return for seeking to cool the situation in Iraq.
Syria will want the return of the Golan Heights, occupied by Israel, while Iran will want a compromise with the US over its plans to develop nuclear technology for peaceful purposes. Then, there is the question of Palestine and the development of the Palestinian state.
The truth is that any turn to negotiations with Iran and Syria will give Israel the shivers, since it will be the loser, the price of its military failure to destroy the Hezbollah in the Lebanon. There it was hardly value for money, for the billions of dollars that the US pours into Israel every year.
In fact, there is now a state of alarm in the Israeli military with a split amongst the generals, with a group demanding that the chief of the general staff be sacked and that there be a purge of the higher command.
Chief of staff Dan Halutz ‘lacks professionalism and charisma,’ reserve General Yanush Ben-Gal told Israel public radio, adding for good measure, ‘He is responsible for a failure of the Israeli army in Lebanon that amounts to a knock-out. He has to resign.’
An Israeli commander in charge of the Lebanese border region, Brigadier General Gal Hirsch, resigned on Sunday before the inquiry findings were presented to the army leadership in a six-hour session, which turned into shouting matches as Halutz rejected the findings.
The above is just a reminder that Israel has to suffer only one serious military defeat and the state of Israel is finished. The Lebanese debacle has served to remind the Israeli general staff of this fact.
The essence of the current drive by the US-UK to talks with Iran and Syria, is that this drive comes from weakness not strength, from the defeat of their forces in Iraq and Afghanistan at the hands of insurgents.
The task that faces the Arab masses and the revolutionary forces of Iraq, Palestine, Syria and the Lebanon is not to allow what they have won on the battlefield to be given away during talks with the imperialists, but to drive forward the Arab revolution to kick imperialism out of the region and transform it with the establishment of the Palestinian state, as part of a Socialist United States of the Middle East, with Jerusalem as its capital.
