Still dying for a cause already lost.

last updated 8 January 2015

United Kingdom

Polly Toynbee

Why are British troops still dying in Iraq? asked Polly Toynbee in the London Guardian. Top officers on the ground in Basra say they want out “while there is still just a chance of saving the situation in Afghanistan.” Yet Prime Minister Gordon Brown waves them off with the promise that we will withdraw “soonish,” the exact date to be decided only after the U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, makes his report to Congress. The implication is that our foreign policy decisions, affecting the lives of our troops, are subordinate to the domestic concerns of our U.S. ally. Are our soldiers dying merely to save face for President Bush? Are we to tell their families that “they died making a noble stand to defend the credibility of a disastrous U.S. president on his way out?” Britons should be furious. We should be in the streets, demanding that our government carry out the will of the people and leave Iraq. Perhaps the “defenestration of Blair,” forced out of the premiership a few months ago, was a kind of “cathartic political bloodletting” that got the anti-war bug out of our system for the moment. If that’s the reason for our apathy, it is unworthy of Britain. “It is unbearable to let one more soldier die for marginal political convenience—and this time the Cabinet must say so.”