WHY CAN’T I HAVE INSTANT VICTORY WITH MY INSTANT COFFEE?

Instant mash potatoes, instant coffee, instant almost anything you want to buy, but surprise, surprise, no instant victory in Iraq!

According to Britain’s former ambassador to Baghdad, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, Tony Blair has been choking on his cup of instant soup (if he drinks such stuff) over the speed at which control has been, or hasn’t been, achieved in Iraq. Okay, I made up the bit about choking over his instant soup, but the reality is that it seems that Blair, like the majority of the western world, has expected victory as instant as the instant everything which the fat west have got used to! According to Sir Jeremy, Blair was “tearing his hair” at the slow progress. Well that would explain what has happened to his hair over the last few years!

I wonder what it is about the western mentality which expects everything to fall instantly into it’s lap? Why do we all come apart when it doesn’t all happen instantly for us the way we planned it? Why do we then inflict the consequences of that mentality upon our allies who have relied on us and trusted us at our word when we said that we would see it through with them, when we really meant that we would see it through as long as it didn’t go beyond our expectations of an instant victory and beyond our capacity to take failure on the way to the victory? So, the Iraqi’s are being left to largely to their own devices to tidy up the mess we have made, something infinitely more annoying than a child having friends around to play with his toys and then being left to take the punishment for and put right the breakages and mess made by the friends who suddenly upped and left when it all got too messy. “Wasn’t me sir! Not my mess! I’m off!”

Unfortunately, the majority of people in the west seem to have lost the ability to ‘take it on the chin’ any more! Imagine how strange we would think it to be if a boxer entered the ring with the expectation that they would not get hit. They simply look to be able to absorb the hits better than their opponent and hopefully receive less than they give.

The allied western forces, rightly or wrongly, entered the fray in Iraq with a commitment to the people of Iraq that they would not abandon them until stability was achieved in the region. Now I don’t want anybody to think that I am belittling the sacrifices made by the young men and women of the allied forces in Iraq; but that should not be the reason for our withdrawing from Iraq is happening now.

How are we perceived by the average honest, law abiding and peace yearning Iraqi who is being abandoned in their hour of need because we have lost soldiers of the allied forces. It is easy to argue that it’s not our war, we should never have been there in the first place, we were deceived into supporting the war in the first place, or any of the other arguments which we read of in the news every day. But the point is that we are responsible for the war, we did give the Iraqi people certain expectations as to our commitment and now, with our eyes only on appeasing the people at home about the cost in terms of lives and money right now, we are pushing towards withdrawal and the sacrifice of tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of Iraqis in the bloody civil war which will escalate in a battle for control as the allied troops withdraw. There is also no thought from those pushing for withdrawal, to the incredible cost we will pay for many years to come due to the immense instability of the region. All those people think about is the ‘instant fix’. The easy, instant solution which makes themselves feel better about life today.

The Iranians, Syrians and every other Islamic militia with an eye on Iraq will not count the cost in the same way. The cost to them is just a public relations tool to use against the west. We need to be prepared to persevere, to stick with it. In fact we have a duty and obligation to persevere. We need to take a lesson from Thomas Edison who knew all about perseverance and said, “our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time”.