Eventually, the US will have to negotiate its way out

[bemildred]

---

What is clear is that the US has already suffered a strategic defeat in Iraq. A flagrant act of aggression intended to be a demonstration of untrammelled US imperial power to impose its will on the heart of the oil-producing Arab and Muslim world has instead demonstrated a fatal vulnerability to "asymmetric warfare". It's also true that, as a senior US intelligence officer told the Washington Post this week, "the British have basically been defeated in the south". Far from keeping rival militia from each other's throats, over 80% of violent attacks in the area are directed against British troops.

But, given the political embarrassment a British pullout would represent for the Bush administration in Washington, it's hard to imagine Brown's government ordering a comprehensive withdrawal any time soon. So British soldiers will have to expect to go on paying Tony Blair's blood price for the much-vaunted special relationship.

Despite the congressional bluster, a better guide to US intentions was given by the defence secretary, Robert Gates, a couple of months back, when he declared that the US was looking for a "long and enduring presence" in Iraq - reflected in plans to consolidate 14 "enduring bases" across the country. Given the huge US strategic interest in Iraq and the region - and its determination to halt the spread of Iranian influence - that seems unlikely to change in the event of a Democratic presidential victory in 2008. In other words, the price of staying in Iraq will have to rise still further if the US is going to be forced out and Iraq regain its independence.

Inside Iraq, that price can only be exacted by increased resistance. More than any other single factor, it has been the war of attrition waged by Iraq's armed resistance - or insurgency as it is usually described in the western media - that has successfully challenged the world's most powerful army and driven the demand for withdrawal to the top of the political agenda in Washington. Two years ago the US vice-president, Dick Cheney, insisted the insurgency was in its "last throes". But while the outside world has increasingly focused on al-Qaida-style atrocities against civilians and sectarian killings, the guerrilla war against the occupation forces has continued to escalate. There are now over 5,000 attacks a month, a more than 20-fold increase on four years ago, and the US and British death toll is rising. Opinion polls show there is majority support for armed resistance across Iraq; in Sunni areas it is overwhelming.

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/columnist/story/0,,2144734,00.html