Only bad options

'The week the war unravelled' was Saturday's headline on the Independent. It's still unravelling. The director of public diplomacy(sic) in Washington's bureau of near eastern affairs has retracted his weekend claim that the US 'failure' in Iraq stemmed in part from 'arrogance and stupidity'.

The US has admitted that it can no longer continue its operation of trying to control Baghdad. The town of Amara, handed over by British forces in the summer, has once more erupted in fighting between the Badr Brigades and the Mahdi Army.

George Bush has now compared the war on Iraq with Vietnam, which can't be a great idea two weeks before an election where the Republicans look like getting pasted over the war.

Ever since General Sir Richard Dannatt's bombshell two weeks ago, the ground has been cut from beneath the feet of the pro war lobby (itself an ever dwindling group of people reliant on the indefatigable Christopher Hitchens to keep it in good heart).

The problem for the war party is there is a momentum here which may be unstoppable, even if Donald Rumsfeld is sacrificed, as is now being talked about.

I am frequently confronted by journalists and military who say 'we have to stay and finish the job'. Or, in the words of Margaret Beckett and Tony Blair, we 'have to hold our nerve' (as if the occupation of Iraq was a trapeze act at the circus). There's one simple flaw in this argument: it isn't getting any better. In the words of Sir Jeremy Greenstock, who helped run the occupation in Iraq, 'there are only bad options for the coalition from now on.'

There is no job being done here apart from occupying a country the majority of whose population want the troops to leave. There is no reconstruction, no improvement in people's lives.

Even most pro war elements now understand this. When you have Dannatt and Greenstock both saying things can only get worse, you know that Blair is pretty much last man standing in Whitehall.

The solution isn't, however, sending in more troops _ or asserting that if only more troops had gone in three and a half years ago then things would have gone swimmingly. The problem here is not implementation but the principle involved. When you occupy someone else's country you are going to find the population against you.

So let's not occupy countries and pretend we are doing them a favour, or that the morass we find ourselves in is 'progress'.

In Afghanistan there is still a lot of talk about finishing the job. But the occupation has presided over the demise of the Taliban, the election of a pro western government, the rise of the Taliban, and the growing unpopularity of the pro western government. Meanwhile no women's liberation, no reconstruction.

Doesn't that mean it's going backwards?