Soldiers from the 51st. State

The "operational" proposal that a contingent of British troops be redeployed north of Basra, to supplement American troop levels and allow U.S. operations to occur in Falluja and elsewhere, has generated a predictable firestorm of criticism within the UK, even from those nominally in favour of military operations in Iraq.

The most revealing arguments floated against this deployment is that those troops would (1) then be placed under American command and (2) operating under tougher rules of engagement.

The first speaks to the nation's continuing ambivalence about participation in the Iraq misadventure, and is understandable but wrong-headed. Even within the relative autonomy of their own command and tucked within the relative safety of the majority-Shia enclave in Basra, the British Army are in reality subordinate to the larger American-lead effort.

The second is a tougher nut to crack, and has repercussions beyond the war in Iraq, and addresses the harsher, retributive elements of American society itself. It is one of the world's worse kept secrets that the British Army and its political masters view US tactics in Iraq with considerable concern. It is held that American air bombardments and "shock and awe" frontal assaults are counterproductive to dealing with an insurgency, and that these unnecessarily violent and indiscriminate tactics serve as effective recruiting agents for that insurgency.

The tests that should be applied for determining the rules of engagement are as follows:

1. Are the responses proportionate to the events? Current body counts are running at a 10:1 ratio of Iraqi to American deaths, which, even allowing for the deaths of Iraqis at the hands of other Iraqis, suggest that they are not.
2. Do the responses achieve the desired result? This should be answered by looking beyond the immediate goal (say killing an insurgent in a bombing attack) to the larger picture: is our course of actions achieving the desired goal of a stable Iraq? The continuing insurgency would indicate otherwise.
3. Would you do what you're doing if it were in Belfast? In other words, would you authorize an air strike on the Falls Road or the Bogside to target an insurgent or group of insurgents? If the answer is no, then the inevitable conclusion is that European lives (even ones threatening your soldiers' lives) are more highly valued than Arab lives, and that therefore the methods used in Iraq are infused with the stench of racism, colonialism's stunted brother.

If the British Government does not want to send the Black Watch to support American troops elsewhere because of the fact that they would be under direct US military control, then it morally cannot continue to hide in the Basra enclave, but should leave Iraq. If it decides that British troops can fight under US military control, then the Government should lobby in the strongest possible terms for fundamental changes in the rules of engagement.