The West may have forgotten about Spain’s cowardly appeasement. Al-Qaeda has not. They clearly hope to stampede Britain out of Iraq. Unlike Spain, Britain will be less disposed to cut and run. But many will hope to appease. I think we may be about to see the first real debate in the West between overt appeasers and those who wish to stand and fight. The situation is complicated by the fact that, just a couple of days ago, the British announced a sort of withdrawal plan for a large contingent of their forces in Iraq.
These plans are said to be contingent on the ability of Iraqi troops to take over. The planned Iraqi takeover is not quite as implausible as it sounds, given that there has been relatively little trouble in southern Iraq, where the British forces are. Many of the withdrawn British forces will be redeployed to Afghanistan, where they will lead the NATO force that is supposed to take over from U.S. troops in the south of Afghanistan.
This British withdrawal plan sounds at least plausibly related to the need for NATO help in Afghanistan, and to the larger plan of transferring control of Iraq to Iraqi troops. It makes sense to try the shift first in the safest areas, and an announcement a year ahead of time serves to put pressure on the Iraqi forces and their trainers to be ready for the big test. Still, it’s tough not to think that the open announcement of the withdrawal plan before we knew the Iraqis were ready was driven by British politics. It’s interesting that the terrorists struck even after that withdrawal announcement. Of course, the blast was probably planned long in advance. Even so, you wonder whether al-Qaeda made the mistake of giving Britain a reason to fight harder when it was already on the way out of Iraq. On the other hand, you wonder whether al-Qaeda believes that the withdrawal is proof that Britain can be completely turned. Again, the blast may have been written in stone before the withdrawal announcement. Even so, the (partial) withdrawal announcement is in the mix now.