Iraq: "The Most Hellish Place on Earth"

A recent article by Simon Jenkins claims that Great Britain and the United States "have turned Iraq into the most hellish place on earth" (Jenkins). No matter one's position on the initial invasion, it is fairly evident that the events and strategies since then have not gone according to plan. Now with more and more of the public urging for retraction of the troops, "policy in Iraq is now entering its retreat phase. Where there is no no hope of victory, the necessity for victory must be asserted ever more strongly" (Jenkins). And therein lies the rub.

The need for victory forces the Bush administration to keep troops in Iraq while the omnipresent looming defeat forces the need to pull out and cease the seemingly futile presence of the American and British troops. As they prepare for the inevitable pullout, "the spin doctors are already at work...[blaming] the ingratitude and uselessness of the Iraqis themselves" when the best plan of action would have been to leave after deposing Saddam and let them settle their government themselves (Jenkins). So, the Iraqis will be blamed for a job the coalition botched. While staunch defenders of the invasion argued that the Iraqis couldn't have handled forming their own government (at least not a democratic one), they might have achieved some stability after being left to their own devices. And if this were not true, wouldn't it be better if their country was the most hellish place on earth because of their own devices and not our mismanaged attempts?