"Former British army officer, James Thorne, argued that there was a clear parallel between the Iraqi resistance and the French, Italian and Greek resistance movements against fascism during World War 2. It was necessary to support the Iraqi resistance, he maintained."

Oh was he the idiot who decided a peace protest in the PEACE GARDENS was the perfect setting for him to ramble on about how we should support all Iraqi suicide bombers?

I don't support terrorists who kill civilians. This would include attacking the Red Cross, which has been done both by suicide bombers in Iraq and the USAF in Afghanistan (Oct/Nov 2001). This is BAD.

Guerillas who attack military forces occupying their country are a different matter. This is what the Greeks, Italians and Yugoslavs did, weakening the Nazi war effort, and hastening their own liberation.

I do not wish for the deaths of coalition troops; but while they remain in Iraq, the people of that country have a right to attack them. Get the troops out of where they have no right to be, and the killing will cease. It was a bad thing that millions of German men were killed fighting in the Wehrmacht; it would have been a worse thing if Nazism had not been defeated.

It is tragic that the Iraqi resistance have to use lethal force, but the occupation forces have escalated the conflict to that level (i.e. they open fire even on demonstrators), so the guerillas have little choice. We got a good demonstration from Tiananmen Square what non-violence tactics can achieve against that sort of oppression - martyrdom en masse! Sad, but true.

We should not lump everyone in Iraq together. According to Patrick Cockburn, Bagdhad correspondent in *The Independent*, most people there draw the distinction between the resistance and what they see as foreign terrorists (incidentally, they blame the US for the security vacuum that has allowed the terrorists to operate). My personal estimate would be that there are many groups, some co-ordinated loosely with each other, others actually in emnity with each other. To blame the whole lot for the autonomous actions of a few would be a mistake (parallels with the UK anti-war movement, Andrew?).

I believe self defence is no offence. I realise that Blair used a self-defence argument to take us to war. There was nothing wrong with the principle, just the mendacious scenario in which Iraq, a country with the same GDP as Greater Manchester was any kind of threat to Britain. Just because we have seen a deceitful argument for force based on self-defence, it doesn't mean that there is no such thing as a true one.

Sorry about the mini-essay folks, just trying to be clear.

What do you say, Andrew?

Andrew, get your facts right before launching into print.

The meeting was not an "anti-war meeting" as one ill-informed heckler of James falsely claimed. It was a "Stop Bush" meeting--not necessarily the same thing. And the mid-day rally was advertised for Albert Square not the Peace Gardens. However, Albert Square was full of Christmas traders--so I assume that the location had to be changed to the Peace Gardens at the last minute. Not all opponents of Bush are pacifists and it was entirely wrong to attempt to question the right of someone to make their views known about the best way to stop Bush. The Iraqi resistance has chosen to "stop Bush" by launching a guerrilla war, shooting down US helicopters, and killing soldiers the army of occupation. Any person who thinks that Bush can be stopped by peaceful means is living in cloud cuckoo land, in my opinion.

As Trotsky once wrote: "The British socialist who fails to support, by all possible means, the armed uprisings of colonial peoples in India, Egypt and Ireland, deserves to branded with infamy, if not with a bullet."

Listen to the James Thorne video clip again. What is the FIRST thing he says?

"...I am sure that everyone here would agree with me in condemning the terrorism that has taken place in Iraq with the loss of civilian life and agree that the power that has taken the most civilian life is the United States..."

So, it is clear that James does not advocate pointless terrorism against civilian such as suicide bombings and bombings of synagogues in Turkey. That does not mean that we should not support violent resistance to the colonial occupation forces such as shooting down of military helicopters. That is a legitimate act of resistance to colonialism, not "terrorism".

We might also add that Israel is a state FOUNDED on terrorism--remember the Zionist thugs Irgun and the Stern Gang who drove the Palestinians off their land (ethnic cleansing) and bombed civilian targets such as hotels during the period of British rule? Some Israeli political leaders, like Begin and Shamir, were part of these terrorist groups.

What breathtaking hypocrites the Zionists are.

There is no democracy in occupied Iraq or Palestine today--just as there was no democracy in Nazi occupied Europe. If it was right to support, and finance, the anti-Nazi resistance movements in Italy, France and Greece etc. during World War 2, then why should we not support the Iraqi and Palestinian resistance today? Remember the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) that parachuted explosives experts into France and other occupied countries?

People in countries occupied by foreign armies have the right to self-determination. They also have the right to drive the colonialist occupiers out by force if necessary--just as many colonial liberation movements did throughtout the period of the British Empire. Many former "terrorists" later became prime ministers and presidents feted by Western governments (Mandela being a prime example). One person's "terrorist" is another persons "liberation fighter."

The Iraqis and the Palestinians do not have a professional army. The only way they can fight back is through the traditional methods used by occupied peoples everywhere (Vietnam being the obvious example): guerilla warfare. Suicide bombings of civilian targets are the desparate actions of a desparate people. They are carried out by people who have been driven to the point of depair by the callous, brutality of the US, UK and Isreali colonial occupiers of their countries. They are the actions of people who lash out blindly at their tormentors.

If a serially physically abused, or raped, woman struck out in anger at her male tormentor (or killed him), would we have the right to "condemn" her for doing so? Yes or no? Some men would say "yes" no doubt. They would say that, wouldn't they? But many women might beg to differ. Do we, in the oppressor colonising countries, really have the right to "condemn" people in occupied countries, serially "raped" by our armed forces, for lashing out blindly at their tormentors?

When Britain was threatened with possible invasion by Nazi Germany in 1940, Winston Churchill famously said: "We will fight them on the beaches, we will fight them on the landing grounds, we will fight them in the hills. We shall never surrender..." Churchill was not talking about non-violent direct action. He was talking about KILLING, sabotage, bombings, slitting the throats of the Germans at every opportunity. If the invasion had taken place, a guerrilla resistance movement would have been formed to do this on a systematic basis. In war-time the usual peace-time moral imperative "Thou shalt not kill" turns suddenly into its opposite: "Thou shalt kill as many of the enemy as possible and thou shalt be given a medal for doing so." Western hypocrites try to confuse the issue by disingenuously claiming that we are not at war today and thus the morality of peace-time should prevail. That is simply not the case in Palestine and Iraq. There is a war in these countries.

There is an easy way from the US. UK and Isreal to end the suicide bombings: get out of Iraq, the West Bank and Gaza, pull down the West Bank Wall, and dismantle the Israeli settlements. Initiate a programme of reparartions and aid.

You know full well, that though the event was labelled 'stop bush', the majority of the people there would have been there on an anti-war basis.

I'm glad to see James acknowledges that the resistance consists of various fractions, and that not all of these are worthy of any respect, or legitimacy (such as the Red Cross attackers), but some may be. However it seemed at the time that you failed to emphasise this point enough. Equally it is naive to assume that we know fully the level of popularity the resistance has in Iraq. There is evidence that it may be growing in popularity, but many still seem to see it as counter-productive or misguided. I would probably agree with this. Though nationalists defending their homeland may be justified, it does not necessarily make actively supporting the resistance the right course of action. The US response to the resistance, has been even more brutality - houses bulldozed etc, and escalation is hardly an admirable aim. Surely a better course of action would be to pressure our own government, and despite the limits of our flawed democracy, we still have more impact than dissenting Germans could of had against Hitler's policies, with regard to the invasion analogy you made, to handover power while monitoring the inevitable US attempts to manipulate this process. Open debate, is the way to analyse what is best (UN involvement? How to maintain security and prevent equally repressive fractions taking over or clashing following withdrawal? etc)
Then there is the practical matter that you are NEVER going to 'sell' the idea to any significant number of people in Britain, that we should support the resistance. It would be utterly futile, put your effort into pressuring our government, not into advocating moving in a direct where the waters are unknown, and potentially even more stormy, and damaging to ordinary Iraqis.

Whether the majority was "there on an anti-war basis" is merely your unsubstantiated assertion, Andrew. But that is not the point. The basis on which the rally was called was to "Stop Bush". Asserting that the meeting was an "anti-war meeting not a pro-war meeting", as one rather pompous heckler did, was simply presumptious, arrogant and wrong. You should not assume that everyone thinks as you do.

The location of the rally was accidental--the mailing said the venue was Albert Square. You are not entitled to draw the conclusion that the rally was merely an "anti-war" event because it happened, by chance rather than design, in the Peace Gardens.

I think it is you who is naive in assuming that Bush and Blair can be influenced by peaceful means. Two million people marched last Spring and what good did it do? Did it stop the war in Iraq?

And I think that your "ramblings" about the popularity or otherwise of the Iraqi resistance are, frankly, the typically pathetic weasel-words of British left-liberal muddleheads. If you sit on the fnce long enough, Andrew, don't be surprised if you end up with splinters in your backside. The growing strength of the Iraqi resistance is undeniable and all British anti-colonialists should give them full support.

Chris said:

> ...That does not mean that we should not support violent resistance to the colonial
> occupation forces such as shooting down of military helicopters. That is a legitimate
> act of resistance to colonialism, not "terrorism".
> We might also add that Israel is a state FOUNDED on terrorism--remember the Zionist
> thugs Irgun and the Stern Gang who drove the Palestinians off their land (ethnic
> cleansing) and bombed civilian targets such as hotels during the period of British rule?
> Some Israeli political leaders, like Begin and Shamir, were part of these terrorist
> groups.
> People in countries occupied by foreign armies have the right to self-determination.
> They also have the right to drive the colonialist occupiers out by force if
> necessary--just as many colonial liberation movements did throughtout the period of the
> British Empire. Many former "terrorists" later became prime ministers and presidents
> feted by Western governments (Mandela being a prime example). One person's "terrorist"
> is another persons "liberation fighter."
> The Iraqis and the Palestinians do not have a professional army. The only way they can
> fight back is through the traditional methods used by occupied peoples everywhere
> (Vietnam being the obvious example): guerilla warfare.

and using mostly his words, I said:

The Jews, in what-is-now-Israel, in 1947/8 thought that they were resisting the colonial occupying British (& indeed setting up a socialist utopia).
They may be your terrorists, however they are also others' liberation fighters.
They did indeed go on to be poltical leaders of Israel, feted by Western governments. They felt they were exerting their right to self-determination in a 'land without people' that had been theirs.
They did not have a professional army, and so used guerilla warfare.

">The Jews, in what-is-now-Israel, in 1947/8 thought that they were resisting the colonial occupying British (& indeed setting up a socialist utopia).They may be your terrorists, however they are also others' liberation fighters.They did indeed go on to be political leaders of Israel, feted by Western governments. They felt they were exerting their right to self-determination in a 'land without people' that had been theirs.They did not have a professional army, and so used guerrilla warfare.<

So, you accept that the Zionists were "terrorists". Good. At least you are honest. But you are also a hypocrite. If it was OK for the Zionist terrorists to invade Palestine in the 1940s, why is it wrong for the Palestinians and Iraqis to use guerrilla tactics to resist Zionism and American imperialism today? The Zionists brought this current mess on themselves. The holocaust was a historical crime, but you don't solve crimes by inflicting similar war-crimes on others.

The Zionist terrorists who invaded Palestine were financed and armed by rich Zionists in the US and other Western countries. They attacked a wretchedly poor, Third World community which had been super-exploited the West for generations.


----------


ARTICLE

A Society Created Around Discrimination - An analysis by Peruvian Socialist, Jose Villa


While the Boers and Ulster Protestants can show that they were the majority of the population of some part of their lands for many centuries and that they had some historical-territorial continuity, the Israeli Jews only started to arrive to Palestine in this century. They arrived from all the corners of the planet. The Jews from Western or Eastern Europe, Yemen, Mesopotamia, Maghreb, Central Asia, Kurdistan, the Caucasus, South Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, Australasia, India or Ethiopia had different histories, cultures, histories, traditions, religious practices, languages and races. Some of them evolved in a near complete isolation from other Jewish communities. There are tens or even hundreds of different Jewish religious congregations. The only thing that unites all of them is their common belief in the first Testament and in a common vindication of the old Jerusalem faith.

Hebrew, a `dead' classical language only used for religious rituals and education, was modernised and transformed into the new `national' language.
In
order to develop Hebrew, Zionists undermined Ladino, the traditional Jewish mother tongue of the Jews in the Ottoman empire based in old Spanish, and Yiddish, the traditional European Jewish language based in old German. The Bolsheviks, on the contrary, massively promoted Yiddish. Publications, higher education institutions, schools and even a territory (Birobidjan) where set up for the development of the Yiddish culture and language.

Arabic was the language spoken by the overwhelmingly majority of the population in Palestine until 1948. Around half of the Jews that came to Israel after 1948 came from Oriental countries where most of them had Arabic as their mother tongue.

Like all discriminatory society Israel had a system based in different levels of privileges. The Arabs are the most oppressed but among the Jews the oriental Jews are oppressed by the Azkanazim (Jews from European origins).

The Black Jews (Falasha) suffer racism and discrimination. The Chief rabbinate does not fully recognises their Jewish status. They are a sort of inferior Jew.

Israeli society is also divided amongst religious believers. The most orthodox minority (like the small Naturei Carta) are against the Israeli state because they think that a Jewish state could only be created with a Messiah and that the actual one tries to eliminate the Jewish traditional community in order to create a modern secularised state. The majority of the orthodox (the
`crows') wants a fundamentalist Talmudic and segregationist state. They even attack non-orthodox Jews when they drive cars on the Sabbaths (holy
Saturdays)
or when they see women with `improper' clothes. Many Israelis wants a modern and secularised life.

Most nation-states were created claiming the continuity of a people which lived in the assigned territory for many centuries. Most of the nations,despite having an official religion, adopted some secular and non- confessional legal basis. Pakistan was divided from India around religious allegiances. However, most of the people that inhabited Pakistan where the native population.

In India Marxists are against the creation of Khalistan. A Sikh state could be based in a community which is the majority of the population of certain parts of the Punjab. However, it would be created under religious and segregationist communalist basis and would became a reactionary tool against the most secularised Sikhs and the Indian population.

The Israeli nation can not offer any territorial-historic continuity. Until the last century less than 5% or even 1% of Palestine where Jews. The Jews which arrived in that land had different histories and they and their immediate ancestors lived mainly in other countries or continents. Their only territorial claim to that land was that of descent from the old Israelis who inhabited that land 2,000 years ago. The Welsh, Gaelic and Bretons could claim Britain and even most of Western Europe because the Celts where the majority of the population 2,000 years ago. Different regions in the Balkans and Eastern Europe could have been claimed by Albanians, Serbs, Greeks, Bulgarians, Macedonians, Germans, Hungarians, Turks or Polish because only one century ago they used to be the majority of the population. With this kind of territorial claims the Canaanites or the Philistines, who inhabited Palestine before the Jews -as the Bible related- bloody invaded them, could have better claims. In fact, The Palestinians can claim to be the direct descendants of them.

A Jewish state can be created only around some religious allegiances because that is the only thing in common that all Jews share. A secular state would mean a republic based on a constitution in which every citizen has equal rights. In the Bolshevik Soviet Union, Jews, who were only 2% of the population, were allowed to lead the Red Army, the two main Soviets and the ruling International Party. Would an Israel entity allow an Arab to became prime minister, mayor of Jerusalem or chief of the army? This is impossible because the state is founded on religious segregation.

A Jewish state in a territory that was populated by a heterogeneous Jewish minority until less than half a century and under the expulsion/oppression of its native people, can only survive by means of its Apartheid character.

Can we recognise the right of a Jewish Israeli nation?.-

Palestinians (and progressive Jews) should not recognise the right of Israel to exist. A two-state solution would imply that the Palestinians must renounce most of their lands from which they were pushed in the last five decades.

In Argentina, Australia and the USA the native population was largely wiped out and new modern White settler nations where created on the basis of massive European emigration. We cannot demand that these big countries should be given back to their original peoples. The indigenous populations where reduced to few hundreds of thousands. On the other side tens of millions now constitute industrialised societies.

In these countries we defend the First Nations rights to use their mother tongue in their education and every day life, to have lands and even to achieve self-government in the areas that remain under their control.

Palestine does not offer the same scenario. The Zionists could not annihilate large chunks of the local population. There are more than four million Palestinians living under Israeli control or in neighbouring countries.

The Palestinian working class and intelligentsia are among the Middle East's most enlightened and militant ones. Palestinian fighters are at the forefront of the region's anti-imperialist struggles. Palestinian demonstrations are a very much supported source of inspiration especially for the hundreds of millions of Arab and Muslim masses.

The idea that the Arabs have to accept the colonist entity as a nation with the right to have its own state, is a demand to surrender made by the most pro-imperialist wings of the ruling classes. The left-wing Palestinians are resisting that capitulation.

If the Arab left came to terms with Israel it would reinforce the Islamic fundamentalist attempt to monopolise the anti-Zionist Arab sentiment. That would be a colossal tragedy.

A bi-national Israeli-Arab state would be an unworkable contradiction. Palestine is the historical denomination of a territory. It does not have an exclusive, segregationist or religious connotation. Christians and Muslims, and even some non-Zionist Jews, used that term. Israel means by its inception the desire to create a separate and pure Jewish communalist state.

It is possible to talk about a bi-national or bi-lingual country in Belgium or Wales. In these places different linguistic-cultural communities developed alongside each other without any strong degree of discrimination.

In Spain, Iran, the Andes, India and other countries it is possible to argue in favour of the right of self-determination for all its components or even for a multi-national federation. Basque, Kurds, Quechuas, Tamils are oppressed nationalities which had historical roots in territories in which they had been the majority of the population for centuries.

A bi-national Israeli-Palestinian state would not be based on the equality of both communities. The Arabs have the worst jobs and not have the same rights as the Zionists.

Israel and Aliya are inseparable. Israel needs to grant citizenship to every Jew no matter if he/she was born in Argentina or Australia and has never been before in the country. Israel provides housing, jobs and benefits to the Jewish emigrants while the Arab native population are denied their rights to return to their lands or homes and they cannot have important positions in the state, the police or the army.

Marxists oppose Aliya. We are, of course, in favour of free frontiers and against people's displacement. We want open borders for all the Jews, Gypsies and other peoples who suffer discrimination. However, we have to oppose colonialist emigration. We opposed the French or Italian attempts to resettle poor peasants or workers as colonial tools in Northern Africa. We rejected the Rabat's kingdom mass march on Western Sahara because they wanted to solve a land problem in Morocco at the expenses of the Sarahui local population. A democratic secular Palestine should welcome citizens from all countries but they could not accept émigrés which try to create a segregationist state at the expense of the original people.

In Ecuador the Council of Indian Nations (CONAI) demand that this state should accept its multi-national character. The achievement of that goal would imply a great conquest for all the Indian peoples. In Palestine the native population are not fighting just to be considered as one of the cultural and national components of the state. Israel is, by definition, based in a Jewish supremacist and segregationist platform and in the necessity to ethnically cleanse Plaestine. The Palestinians are claiming their land back. Their historical aim was to refuse to recognise the state that deprived them of their lands and citizenship.

We are not in favour of a bi-cultural Northern Ireland or of a bi-national White/Black South Africa. It does not mean that we are in favour of a clerical Catholic all-Ireland or for expelling all the Whites from South Africa. It means that the former privileged community have to accept that they should cease to consider the rest of the population as inferior and to accept that they should be an equal minority.

We are for the destruction of a purely Jewish segregationist and confessional state. But that does not mean that we want to drive all Jews to the sea or to support another genocide. We want to convince as much Jews as we can that the best thing for them is to unite with the Arab workers in order to create a secular non-religious and non-racist egalitarian republic.

The communists promoted the Yiddish culture and they designated a territory for Jewish colonisation. The Jews did not arrive in Birobidjan as a racist segregationist colonist who tried to exclude the native peoples. They coexisted peacefully with the locals. Today, for example, Birobidjan's Slav majority is very keen in maintaining the Jewish identity of that country as a means of attracting investments, technology and people to develop it.

In countries where the Jews constituted a compact oppressed majority in some territories (like the Falasha in Ethiopia) it was possible to advocate their right of self-determination, including autonomy or separation. However that right could not be extended to a group of people that wants to come into a new country in order to cleanse the local population.

Zionism needs to trample on the rich cultural and linguistic traditions of the Arab, Ladino, Yiddish, Falasha and other Jewish communities in order to create a new Hebrew oppressive nation which is forged in bloodiest battles against the Arab natives. We need to emphasise the fact that the Israeli Jew community is, in fact, a multi-ethnic amalgam. Zionists try to unite them
against a common enemy: the native Arab peoples. We should not help them
in
doing that.

We need to defend many of these communities against the Zionists attempts to deny some of their most progressive traditions (like the Yiddish working class
movements) and its discriminatory conditions in Israel. Begin and Likud tried to use the Oriental Jew resentment against the Azkenazim in a reactionary
way:
trying to transform them into the most patriotic anti-Arab pro-Israeli force.
We should address the oriental Jews explaining that their enemies are not the Arab neighbours or natives but the capitalists and Zionists.

Our demand is for a socialist, secular, multi-ethnic and democratic Palestinian republic. In that country live scores of communities: non- religious Jews and Arabs, secularised Russian-speaking Jews, Ladino-speaking Jews, Yiddish-speaking Jews, Arab-speaking Jews, Muslim and Chritians and
non-
religious people, Hebrew-speakers, different Christian congregations (Armenians, Copts, Catholic, Orthodox, Maronnite, Protestants, etc.), Muslims (Shias, Sunni, etc.), Druses, Bedouins, non-Talmudic Jews (Samaritans, Falasha, Karaite), tens of Hasidic and non-Hasidic Jews, Bahai, etc.

All these communities should have equal rights. No single community should impose its own religion onto the state. A secular constitution with a secular civic code should regulate their activities. There would not be special treatment for those of the same religion which come from other countries. Palestinians should have the right to return.

A democratic multi-ethnic Palestine could only be achieved as a result of a socialist revolution based on workers councils and militias. It would also be part of a socialist federation of the Middle East. In that context not only Palestinians would have the right to return but also Arab Jews would have the right to return to Syria, Morocco, Iraq and other Arab countries. Kurds, Assyrian and other nationalities would achieve self-determination and equal rights.

For some reason, the publishing form is missing out the first part of my answer.

Here it is again:


"The Jews, in what-is-now-Israel, in 1947/8 thought that they were resisting the colonial occupying British (& indeed setting up a socialist utopia)."

The Zionists may have fought the British, but the reality is that that in the process of ditching the declining colonial power of Britain, they became sycophantic creeps, and a bastion, of the new dominant Western power, the US, in the Middle East. There is no escaping this fact. Israel is heavily bankrolled by the US to this very day--it is a US dependency. As to creating a socialist Utopia, dream on. Tell that to the Palestinians. Tell that to the poor, non-European Israelis (see article below on this).


"They may be your terrorists, however they are also others' liberation
fighters."

Zionists may well be imagine that they were "liberation fighters", but this can only be maintained by ignoring inconvenient facts. The Zionists failed to achieve "self determination". In reality, they sold their independence and became a US puppet state, a regional, thug client-regime carrying out the dirty work of US big business in the Middle East.

Thus, you ignore the very different, indeed counterposed, relationship which Israel and Palestine have with the major, dominant, Western power--the US. Israel is, in fact, a puppet regime of the US, dependent on its financial hand-outs. Palestinians Arabs on the other hand have been oppressed and super-exploited by Western imperialism historically.


"They did indeed go on to be political leaders of Israel, feted by Western governments. They felt they were exerting their right to self-determination in a 'land without people' that had been theirs."

Land without people?! So, the Palestinians did not exist when Irgun and the Stern Gang invaded Palestine? You simply pretend they were not there. And presumably the Canaanites did not exist when the Israelites arrived in Palestine in ancient times? This is breathtaking myopia and arrogance.


"They did not have a professional army, and so used guerrilla warfare."

So, you accept that the Zionists were "terrorists". Good. At least you are honest. But you are also a hypocrite. If it was OK for the Zionist terrorists to invade Palestine in the 1940s, why is it wrong for the Palestinians and Iraqis to use guerrilla tactics to resist Zionism and American imperialism today? The Zionists brought this current mess on themselves. The holocaust was a historical crime, but you don't solve crimes by inflicting similar war-crimes on others.

The Zionist terrorists who invaded Palestine were financed and armed by rich Zionists in the US and other Western countries. They attacked a wretchedly poor, Third World community which had been super-exploited the West for generations.

John Pilger now (February 04) says support the Iraqi resistance

Interviewer: Do you think the anti-war movement should be supporting Iraq's anti-occupation resistance?

Pilger: Yes, I do. We cannot afford to be choosy. While we abhor and condemn the continuing loss of innocent life in Iraq, we have no choice now but to support the resistance, for if the resistance fails, the “Bush gang” will attack another country. If they succeed, a grievous blow will be suffered by the Bush gang.

(source:  http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2004/02/284820.html)

Coalition should 'admit defeat and leave Iraq'
By Richard Holt
Daily Telegraph Last Updated: 6:12am BST 05/05/2007

***A former commander of the British Army has said that Britain and America should "admit defeat" and withdraw from Iraq.

***Sir Michael says coalition troops should withdraw

General Sir Michael Rose also said he understood why insurgents were attacking coalition forces and said he believed they were right to try and force invading troops out of the country.

Sir Michael, who led British Forces in Bosnia, has written a book comparing the insurgents' tactics with those of George Washington's forces in the American War of Independence.

Asked on BBC2's Newsnight if he thought the insurgents were right to try to get the American forces out of Iraq, he said: "Yes I do.

"As Lord Chatham said, when he was speaking on the British presence in North America, he said 'if I was an American, as I am an Englishman, as long as one Englishman remained on American native soil, I would never, never, never lay down my arms'.

"The Iraqi insurgents feel exactly the same way. I don't excuse them for some of the terrible things they do, but I do understand why they are resisting the Americans."

He added: "It is the soldiers who have been telling me from the front line that the war they have been fighting is a hopeless war, that they cannot possibly win it and the sooner we start talking politics and not military solutions, the sooner they will come home and their lives will be preserved."

Asked if that meant admitting defeat, he said: "Of course we have to admit defeat.

"The British admitted defeat in North America and the catastrophes that were predicted at the time never happened. The catastrophes that were predicted after Vietnam never happened.

"The same thing will occur after we leave Iraq."

Sir Michael recently criticised the behaviour of the 15 naval personnel captured by Iranian forces in Iraqi waters.

He said the sailors should not go into battle "as if they are on a Mediterranean cruise".

Last year Sir Michael called for Tony Blair to be impeached over the war in Iraq.

He accused the Prime Minister of misleading Parliament and the public about his motives for going to war, saying that although the emphasis was on removing the threat of weapons of mass destruction, Mr Blair "probably had some other strategy in mind".

 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/05/03/nrose103.xml