Iraq

I think Gordon Brown has changed the government's stance slightly. He's brought David Miliband - who was sceptical about the war - in as Foreign Secretary. And appointed Mark Malloch-Brown, who was actively opposed to the war, as a Foreign Office minister. I think a gradual process of withdrawal is under way. "Without America's goodwill, Britain would be thrown to the dogs." I'm not sure it would. Trade with the US is obviously important but their are plenty of countries that have different ideas to the US on foreign policy and still continue economic links. Venezuela does business in the US and Hugo Chavez spends half his time comparing Bush to Satan. I think would've got away with not sending troops to Iraq if that's what we'd decided.

Buks is probably right - Brown voted for the war, and no politician ever admits to being wrong. So now he's saying things haven't changed but at the same time he is sowing the seeds of withdrawl.

So we withdraw and Shia and Sunni murder each other and it all ends up in some ghastly repressive regime .The country ends up in the hands of the most violent.Maybe we can't stop it.Maybe we have to mind our own beeswax and our borders and try not to mind what happens in other places.I think we are still a major economy .In size of GDP about 4th but not GDP per head.What is unbearable I think is that perhaps we can't fix things but we still have to know about them.People always mention Palestine but what about the horrors in Africa?Perhaps it is just that Palestine looks as though it ought to be fixable if only we tried hard enough.

My ex-wife who is an Israeli (of Iranian extraction) said "They'll never beat us, they're too concerned with fighting each other." And yes, there should be a Palestinian state.

The key to all of this is Palestine. The major stumbling block to finding a solution there is the strength of the Jewish lobby in the USA. Once the Septics cease to support anything the Israelis do then they will be brought to the negotiating table. If a settlement is reached in Palestine (and it is not unimagineable) then Iraq and everywhere else in the Middle East will settle down. It was the same in Northern Ireland. Whilst the Irish Septics continued to supply the IRA with money and arms then the violence continued.

"So we withdraw and Shia and Sunni murder each other and it all ends up in some ghastly repressive regime .The country ends up in the hands of the most violent." Well, the country was in the hands of one of the most violent groups of people in Iraq before we invaded it. There is a actually something worse than that, though, and that's it being in the hands of nobody at all. That is the most likely scenario at the moment in several parts of Iraq. In general, I don't think it's an either/or situation. Sometimes the international community can invade countries and make things better, sometimes it can't. In Sierra Leone and Kosovo, we got involved and - on balance - things ended up imperfect but better than if we hadn't got involved. "What is unbearable I think is that perhaps we can't fix things but we still have to know about them." There is one way around that. Stop watching the TV news, stop listening to the radio and read the Daily Express. "If a settlement is reached in Palestine (and it is not unimagineable) then Iraq and everywhere else in the Middle East will settle down." While I look forward to a point when we find out whether this is true, I think you might be being a bit optimistic.

How do you begin to change a feudal mindset?

Kill a king?

Why did the Balkans stop? Does anyone know?

Lots of reasons. And obviously we need to acknowledge that the various Balkans conflicts have died down rather than being over. One reason was international military action. In that sense it was different to Iraq in that several sides were fighting each other and international forces intervened to try and stop the fighting. In Iraq, rightly or wrongly, international forces started the fighting. There are still lots of peace keeping troops in Bosnia, Kosovo etc. Another issue was that a key factor was the actions of one country/area, Serbia, attempting to assert control of other countries/areas. Once they'd been persuaded that carrying on the various fights wasn't in their interests - by a combination of military action and negotiations - they could stop and carry just being a country. Then there's possibly the biggest one, the fact that the conflicts in the Balkans were generally about ethnic and national identity. On that basis, once people have split off into small enough states, they can just get on with things. The main underlying problem in Iraq is a battle about who controls extremely valuable natural resources. Even if Iraq split into three states, they could still end up in an ongoing war over who owns the oil.

It's not impossible to have peace in the most stricken of war-torn countries. Look how Lebanon re-healed itself after the anarchy of the Eighties. And it had many many more factions in it than Iraq does. Most of the settlements will have to be made within the Iraqi governing council. And they'll have to allow Saddam's Bathist officers/officials back into positions of trust and power. And systems will have to be created and regulated to ensure that the security services are organised and controlled by the government and not by local militia leaders, if peace is to be restored and maintained. As for Britain and America - they certainly created the problem that we're looking at. But, I think their ability to solve it is all but non-existent. An Iraqi solution is necessary. My webpage is at: http://www.bookscape.co.uk

I think an Iraqi solution would require a majority of people in powerful positions to see themselves as Iraqi more than Sunni, Shia or Kurd. That doesn't look likely at the moment.