-Caveat Lector- Comment http://politics.guardian.co.uk/iraq/comment/0,12956,925082,00.html
Even if he wins the war, Blair has been humiliated It may not be time to write the PM's obituary, but he has had a truly disastrous week Jonathan Freedland Saturday March 29, 2003 The Guardian Tony Blair could still get his Churchill moment. Basra might fall, Baghdad could follow, with the British and Americans finally winning their long- promised tears-and-cheers welcome from a grateful Iraqi nation - and Blair would be vindicated as surely as Winston Churchill was six decades ago. If that happens, the prime minister will carry all before him. "The doom- mongers got it wrong once again," he will say, allowing himself a wry smile. "They lost heart because the first days of war were difficult; they forgot that Kosovo and Afghanistan had their dark days too. But we stuck with it and we were proved right." Any doubters on future plans - domestic or foreign - will be swept aside. Opponents will be lumped in with the anti- war crowd: naysayers who lack the PM's wisdom and vision. For Tony Blair, victory in Iraq will mean victory everywhere. But this week another scenario hoved into view. We are not there yet, not by any means, but in the past few days we have glimpsed an alternative future - one in which this ill-thought out and badly planned war claims the prime ministership of Tony Blair as yet another of its unintended victims. Of course, events on the ground could rapidly unblock with Saddam's regime belatedly following the Pentagon script and duly falling to its knees. But the way things stand now, this war is going badly for the PM. These first 10 days have disproved two of his core, pre-war arguments: that Saddam has weapons of mass destruction and that his people would instantly see foreign invasion as liberation. If, heaven forbid, Baghdad had let loose a chemical warhead or two, it would have confirmed everything Blair and George Bush had said: that, for all his lies, Saddam has these vile weapons and is prepared to use them. Conversely, if there had been no Iraqi resistance, London and Washington would again have been vindicated: Iraqis hate their leader so much, they prefer invasion to their current plight. But this war has been neither hard enough nor easy enough to prove Blair right: instead it is turning out to be a slog that shows he and the military planners read Iraq wrong. In the choice words of America's top infantry commander, William Wallace: "The enemy we're fighting is different from the one we'd war-gamed against." But in Blair's war the defeats are not confined to the battlefield. Diplomatically he is being humiliated, running to Washington or Camp David or wherever Bush summons him, only to receive the most meagre reward. So, having reassured a sceptical country and party that this war would be authorised by a second UN resolution, he broke his back to get one while the US barely broke a sweat. Blair worked the phones; Bush made no secret of his nonchalance whether he got a UN mandate or not. Rebuffed once, Blair set his sights a little lower. Instead of UN approval before the war, he sought a UN role after it. That promise was enough to keep Clare Short on side, but even that is proving too much for Washington. Blair returned to Britain yesterday with next to nothing from Bush and certainly no firm promise that the US will let the UN administer postwar Iraq. At their joint press conference, Blair was reduced to talking merely of an "appropriate" post- conflict administration, while Bush pointedly did not mention the UN at all. No topic confirms Blair's humiliation more fully, though, than the Middle East peace process. Blair wants progress here partly because he genuinely believes in it and partly to mollify anti-war anger on both the Arab street and the Labour backbenches. And what does Blair have to show, in this area, for his shoulder-to-shoulder loyalty to Bush? Nada, zip and zilch. All he has managed to extract is a promise to publish a document - the much- vaunted roadmap - which was written last autumn and which, in itself, has no teeth at all. Bush made that pledge on the eve of war, when London was still trying to win over the waverers: he probably said it to help Blair out, with his cabinet and in the security council. But it has still not appeared. Blair is repeatedly asked to explain this fact, and watching him make excuses for Washington's laggard behaviour is becoming excruciating. First, we were told the road map would appear once the Palestinians had appointed a prime minister. On Tuesday Blair revealed that the goalposts had shifted: the new Palestinian PM, Abu Mazen, would have to name his cabinet first. Then, on Thursday, Blair explained that Abu Mazen's "confirmation had to be properly administered" - whatever that means. A British prime minister is having to cover for the fact that Washington is not interested in advancing Middle East peace while this war is on - and maybe not afterwards either. It is mortifying to behold, a British PM risking everything in the hope that he can nudge an instinctively unilateralist Republican president toward processes and institutions he and his team either doubt or mock. So how great is the risk for Blair? He has certainly made a massive withdrawal from the electorate's goodwill bank. Even if the war ends well and soon, it's hard to see how he could demand the nation trust him again on, say, a decision to join the euro in June, when the five tests are due. Whatever happens in Iraq, that judgment will surely have to be delayed. Still, on its own, none of this yet amounts to the tremor that might trigger his downfall. For one thing, there is no opposition to exploit the opening. The Tories are weak and they back this war as much as the government: if it is a failure, they will be discredited too. Inside Labour, there is anger to be sure. Tribune editor and national executive committee member Mark Seddon walked out of an NEC meeting on Tuesday in disgust with his leader. "I can't even look at him now, I'm so angry," he says. He picks up unease in the union movement too, which could come to a head in leftwinger Tony Woodley's bid for the leadership of the T&G. The Labour tribe holds the UN sacred - taking pride in the Attlee government's role in its founding - and feels a gut aversion at Blair's closeness to a pro-death penalty, oil-man, Republican president. But none of this yet has the makings of a coup against Blair. The rebels have no leader: Robin Cook would be a natural focus, but he has disavowed all such plotting. Heavyweights Gordon Brown and John Prescott have remained onside, ensuring cabinet unity even in these toughest of times. And, loyalist ministers point out, the wider Labour faithful are in no mood for ditching a proven vote-winner. "People looked over the precipice a couple of weeks ago," says one, recalling the brief moment when there was talk of dumping Blair, "and they took several large steps back." Another insists that "traditional Labour" supports the war, reporting firm backing on the council estates and poorer areas of his constituency: "They back the troops and they know that sometimes force is the only way to deal with a neighbourhood bully like Saddam."A colleague agrees: "This war has reconnected Blair with the C2s, Ds and Es." So like the armies in the Gulf, Tony Blair will soldier on. Like them, he will win eventually - but it may be at a perilously high price. [EMAIL PROTECTED] Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003 Forwarded for your information. 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