In late 2007, Britain vacated to an airport outside the city and handed over control in Basra to the Iraqis. Applying the exact opposite approach as the United States - leaning back rather than forward - British command is now in the process of claiming similar advances in the security situation. In what must be seen as a simply stunning quote, British Major General Graham Binns said that since the UK disengaged in Basra, attacks on UK forces are down 90%.“We thought, ‘If 90% of the violence is directed at us, what would happen if we stepped back?’,” Gen Binns said.
About 500 British troops moved out of one of Saddam HusseinÂ’s palaces in the heart of Basra in early September, joining some 4,500 at a garrison at an airport on the cityÂ’s edge.
Since then there has been a “remarkable and dramatic drop in attacks,” Gen Binns said in an interview in Baghdad on Thursday.
Applying this logic, attacks on British forces would be down an amazing 100% if they withdrew from Iraq entirely. Achieving a zero-attack level on forces is not the mission - in Basra or elsewhere. Binns continuedÂ…
“The motivation for attacking us was gone, because we’re no longer patrolling the streets,” he said.
This is a disturbing matrix for calculating success.