What is it going to take?

There will probably be some profound words involved when Barack Obama announces today that US combat operations in Iraq are to come to an end. But there are just as likely to be people drawing parallels with Nixon’s address to the nation that troops were to return from Vietnam.

For all the passionate flag-waving, neither turning of events could ever be credibly portrayed as a victory or even “mission accomplished” – especially as few have ever agreed on either the purpose of the mission or the objectives entailed.

Another anticipated similarity is that Obama’s broadcast from the Oval Office will be no more overtly critical of the Bush administration than Nixon was of Johnson and Kennedy. US foreign policy will always run in conjunction with US interests and it would be naive to expect anything else. Even so, the president’s PR staffs have their hands full in presenting a failure to form a government in Baghdad and a huge new escalation in violence as an intended part of the strategy.

Things naturally look very different from this side of the pond where the recriminations and the rationalisations just keep on coming. Whitehall is full of people with decades of diplomatic experience and who were ignored by Blair & Brown in their eagerness to sign up to “regime change”; even though events subsequently unfolded to ensure it was their regime as well as Saddam’s that bit the dust. Moreover, and as several historians have pointed out, Anglo-American influence could very easily have installed democratic governments in post-War Persia.

The reason why they instead backed more despotic models is that two-thirds of the world's proven oil reserves are to be found in the Persian Gulf. Keeping it out of anti-democratic Russian soviet hands was a priority which necessitated equally undemocratic but “stable” administrations on the ground; thus protecting what was under it. Despite repeated denials at the Chilcott Enquiry, it is a key consideration that evoked contemporary echoes in 2003 when US cars could be seen sporting bumper stickers with the exhortation to “Kick his ass and grab the gas”.

The New Labour government ministers who were apparently swayed by talk of WMD launches within 45 minutes would not only have known about past illegal US interventions in sovereign states but would have quite possibly protested about them as students. If Al Qaeda were not active in Baghdad prior to invasion then the attack and subsequent occupation ensured that they have since thrived.

Whilst conspiracy theories continue to bounce around about David Kelly, the effect of winning a war but losing a peace means that what is now happening in Iraq arguably borders on a holocaust requiring co-ordinated humanitarian intervention as much as any natural disaster. Yet UK politicians seem unable to detach themselves from an American outlook which De Gaulle once described as "neurotic" and has been living up to the reputation ever since.  

In the 1980’s Britain served as a US aircraft carrier - and became a strategic target as a result. In later years, we provided the departure lounge for rendition flights. Why are we so politically interlinked when recent events show that US financial market trends are no longer the barometer which determines the weather in the UK compared to the economic bow-waves of India and China?

Every successive new PM makes the trip to Washington in the first few months of office while the UK media excitedly talks up the “special relationship”. Or in Cameron’s case, we assume the role of junior partner and the visit rates sixth spot on US network news. Each time the bitter lessons of the past are consigned into the bin in exchange for some undefined promise of a better future. It has proved time and again to be a dangerous and unproductive arrangement. What is it going to take before we learn?