by Michael Portillo
The harrowing sight of Sergeant George Long struggling to escape his armoured vehicle with his face and back on fire lives in our minds. The events in Basra represent another stage in our loss of innocence about the Iraq war. Until last week it was possible to believe that British forces, operating far from Baghdad and the Sunni triangle, were relatively safe.
We liked to believe that that was due to our soldiers' superior mode of operations. While American forces roared through the streets of the capital in heavily armoured convoys, our soldiers' friendly faces looked out from open topped vehicles. Whereas GIs shot from the hip, British troops engaged the Iraqis' hearts and minds.
Such illusions are shattered. Nearly 100 British soldiers have died since the war began. Toby Dodge of Queen Mary College, University of London, believes that the "softly, softly" approach was dictated not by tactics but military weakness.
Britain simply does not have enough troops to police the vast area under our authority (even with Italian and Australian help). Our army has been forced to do something forbidden in military textbooks: to keep the peace among a population that we were unable to disarm.
So we are failing. Basra has seen 120 assassinations this year. Kidnappings are common. Insurgents have wounded and murdered students at Basra University with impunity.
I criticise neither our soldiers nor their officers. Long's heroism in remaining in the field for hours after receiving serious burns is further evidence of their courage. I need no convincing that they have done a magnificent job.
However, their task is impossible. They are asked to oversee the maintenance of order in a convoluted struggle between rival groups vying for power. It might be done with effective local help. But the Iraqi security forces were disbanded. Of those who have been trained since, some are good, but many are poorly led and incompetent. They have been infiltrated by the militias, as Mowaffaq al Rubaie, Iraq's national security adviser, admits.
When Colonel Bill Dunham, an army spokesman, was asked on the radio whether our forces could go on holding the ring, he refused to comment. His reticence was understandable. The warring factions have only one thing in common: a detestation of the occupying alliance, represented in southern Iraq by Britain.
British commanders understand fully the range of forces opposing them. We face attack from Shi'ite militants -the Mahdi army, controlled by Moqtada al-Sadr, the cleric, and forces led by Abu Mustafa al-Sheibani, probably backed by Iran.
There is no sign that the politicians directing the operation from afar appreciate such intricacies. Washington and London issue platitudes rather than analysis.
There is a gulf between how things are perceived on the ground and how they are glossed over in the capitals.
Former army officers who I meet socially generally express their opposition to Britain's adventure in Iraq. Last week Field Marshal Lord Bramall, a former chief of the defence staff, and General Sir Michael Rose, a one-time commander of our operations in Bosnia, spoke out publicly. I imagine that many serving officers share those doubts.
These are difficult times for people like me who backed the war. Many of the arguments that we put forward have lost their force. We liked to say that however bad things were, they were worse under Saddam Hussein. It seemed a safe claim after his reign of terror. But perhaps 100,000 Iraqis have died since liberation.
Does the average Iraqi citizen feel more secure now? Hundreds daily seek work by joining the queues in the open air. They must be desperate to offer themselves as such obvious targets for suicide bombers.
We imagined that Iraqis would benefit from cleaner water, more reliable electricity and better education. But America, the land of plenty, has failed to supply creature comforts to Iraqis, just as America, the superpower, has failed to keep them safe.
I have not become an admirer of those who opposed the war. For some of them, disagreeing with every intervention since Bosnia was a matter of routine. Others merely detest anything linked to George W Bush. I have not heard any of them grapple seriously with the problem that the West faced in 2001. The 9/11 attacks made us look weak. After previous outrages we had been irresolute and appeared unwilling to defend ourselves. United Nations sanctions were collapsing. Saddam's long and successful defiance of the West added to Al-Qaeda's contempt and so to our danger.
The anti-war group make fatuous comments today. Charles Kennedy, leader of the Liberal Democrats, demands an exit strategy. Well, the options are to leave on a given date or when specified goals have been achieved. The United States and Britain intend to withdraw when the constitution is in place and the Iraqis can handle their own security. The problem is not that there is no strategy, but rather that it looks unachievable.
Those who opposed the war, if they want to be taken seriously, must calculate the consequences of withdrawing in failure. It would represent a signal victory for the murderous band of fanatics who want to destroy western civilisation and who are among those waging war on Iraqis and on allied forces. Our exit would release Al-Qaeda's resources to fight us elsewhere. It would end the hopes that we still have for democracy in Iraq, and set back progress towards plurality in other Muslim countries. Rogue states that have become more wary of the United States since it toppled Saddam would be set free to export terror and weaponry without sanction. To call for an exit but to ignore those issues smacks of self-indulgence.
Yet Kennedy's demand for withdrawal, however poorly thought through, helped to rescue him after his party had spent its conference week criticising his leadership.
In the Tory party, Michael Howard offered a new strategy: to explain to the Iraqi government that militias are unacceptable. He might as well suggest that they be spanked and made to stand in the corner. Such unconvincing proposals strengthen the leadership candidacy of Kenneth Clarke. The present horrors in Iraq are a subliminal reminder to MPs that this man of independent judgment always denounced the war.
Some Conservative MPs dream that the general election might have gone differently if the party had taken a populist line on Iraq. Actually it would have been disastrous if the Tories (traditionally the patriotic party) had opposed the operation as our forces went into action. Sir Malcolm Rifkind, another leadership contender, has compared Iraq with the Suez crisis of 1956. Let us remember that Labour seemed on safe ground in opposing that disastrous Tory invasion, yet at the following election the Conservatives increased their majority.
Another parallel has come to mind. Tony Blair once cockily scoffed at critics who had said Iraq would be his Vietnam. The comparison is not perfect but there is something in it. We do not know how to extricate ourselves. While the government talks of reducing our forces, in fact we need to reinforce in the face of failure.
Even so we cannot be sure of withdrawing from Basra with more dignity than the Americans left Saigon. Like a latter-day President Johnson, Blair will probably leave office with the soldiers still out there.
Some believe Blair will succeed during his last months in office in reforming our public services. I doubt it. If Iraq stays in the news his lame duck authority will drain that much faster. Labour delegates at this week's conference may muse that it would be easier for a new prime minister to pull out of Iraq, so the sooner Gordon Brown takes over the better.
It is bad luck for Blair that Basra blew up last week. There is nothing unusual about dreadful news from Iraq. The number of American casualties has been rising remorselessly. The slaughter of Iraqis in bombings and the Baghdad Shi'ite stampede have been appalling.
But we British are somewhat parochial. A horrific incident involving our forces affects us more powerfully than deaths of allies or massacres of the people who we liberated. The sight of Long blazing like a human torch is an indelible image.
After a brief absence from British politics, Iraq has returned to centre stage.
