Letters From A Tory Daily views on British politics and the Conservative Party from a centre-right thinker who writes letters on his blog to politicians, journalists and many others.

Dear Patrick Cockburn,

The complicated nature of the war in Iraq is not something that can be dealt with in a blog post.  Even so, I was unimpressed by your article in today’s Independent on the ‘withdrawal’ of British troops from Basra.  Your article seemed to focus on the negative aspects of our involvement in Iraq, and in that respect I will happily admit to agreeing with some of your points.  The failure to control the local police force almost certainly undermined the work of British troops and the Americans were clearly not prepared for Iraq in terms of an effective exit strategy.

However, I still felt that your article was rather weak.  It seemed as though you criticised the role of British troops in Basra as if it was always destined to fail – as if we were never going to have the desired effect in the city.  This is such a ridiculously weak point that it wasn’t even worth making.  Sitting there with the rather substantial benefit of hindsight and saying ‘I told you so’ is cowardly.  What are you judging our success or failure against?  History will not look kindly on any aspect of the Iraq war, but to reel off your points as if this end result was always inevitable is appallingly simplistic.

We will never know what could have happened in Iraq if we had created a proper exit strategy and we will never know what Basra would have been like should we have never entered the city.  I’m sorry to say that your article contributes little, if anything, to the debate.

Yours sincerely,

A.Tory