THE NOISE BEFORE DEFEAT

NOTHING BECAME THE DISAPPOINTING “9/11 wars” like their endings. The fall of Kabul brought terror and death to the airport, a scramble at the British embassy, open celebrations in Islamabad, and recrimination in the House of Commons. Washington’s execution of the pull-out from Afghanistan was, by credible accounts, reprehensibly and preventably poor. But a long, fraught campaign with ill-considered and unbounded ambitions on behalf of a rotten and predatory client state, a collapsing army and wishful falsehoods about progress against a determined adversary with international backing, cannot end well or proudly.

Britain’s retreat from Iraq was quieter and more artful. Yet it also reflected failure. In the summer of 2007, with Basra imploding around them, Britain’s overstretched forces withdrew from Basra Palace to the refuge of the airport. To do so, they negotiated the permission of an Iranian-backed militia, the Jaysh al-Mahdi — the kind of oppressive force the counterinsurgency campaign was supposed to marginalise, sponsored by a state the war was intended to deter from mischief. The withdrawal drew bitter criticism from the US, another irony. Britain’s participation was supposed to reinforce influence over Washington.

with perverse outcomes. How did it come to this? In the hour of defeat, some of Britain’s war hawks, security grandees and former office-holders who denounce withdrawal — the “Stayers” — are having a fair old, blame-shifting romp. They lambast anyone other than themselves. They fix criticism exclusively on a botched withdrawal, not the preceding military adventure they championed. Just