From the UK Independent:

In a comment entitled "The British Defeat in Iraq" the pre-eminent American analyst on Iraq, Anthony Cordesman of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, in Washington, asserts that British forces lost control of the situation in and around Basra by the second half of 2005.

Mr Cordesman says that while the British won some tactical clashes in Basra and Maysan province in 2004, that "did not stop Islamists from taking more local political power and controlling security at the neighbourhood level when British troops were not present". As a result, southern Iraq has, in effect, long been under the control of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SICRI) and the so-called "Sadrist" factions.

And it looks like the Brits understand now that their part of the war could never be won, and when it all went sour:

The British control of southern Iraq was precarious from the beginning. Its forces had neither experience of the areas in which they were operating nor reliable local allies. Like the Americans in Baghdad, they failed to stop the mass looting of Basra on the fall of Saddam Hussein and never established law and order.

American and British officials never appeared to take on board the unpopularity of the occupation among Shia as well as Sunni Iraqis. Mr Blair even denies that the occupation was unpopular or a cause of armed resistance.

How familiar. This is familiar too:

Mr Cordesman says the British suffered political defeat in the provincial elections of 2005, and lost at the military level in autumn of the same year when increased attacks meant they they could operate only through armoured patrols.

The armored patrols thing happened to us, too. But don't worry! It's only going to take Petraeus ten more years in Iraq to fix...

Much-lauded military operations, such as "Corrode" in May 2006, did not alter the balance of forces.

Familiar.

Mr Cordesman's gloomy conclusions about British defeat are confirmed by a study called "The Calm before the Storm: The British Experience in Southern Iraq" by Michael Knights and Ed Williams, published by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Comparing the original British ambitions with present reality the paper concludes that "instead of a stable, united, law-abiding region with a representative government and police primacy, the deep south is unstable, factionalised, lawless, ruled as a kleptocracy and subject to militia primacy".

Oopsie, thought he was talking about the effects of Republican governance here at home, not in Iraq! My bad. Of course, we don't have religious militias here. Yet.

Local militias are often not only out of control of the Iraqi government, but of their supposed leaders in Baghdad. The big money earner for local factions is the diversion of oil and oil products, with the profits a continual source of rivalry and a cause of armed clashes. Mr Knights and Mr Williams say that control in the south is with a "well-armed political-criminal Mafiosi [who] have locked both the central government and the people out of power".

So why are there still British troops in Iraq?

British soldiers have stayed and died in southern Iraq, and will continue to do so, because Mr Blair finds it too embarrassing to end what has become a symbolic presence and withdraw them.

Again, familiar.

For good or ill, the British have a centuries-old imperial tradition that gives them the historical perspective the loons running our country so sorely lack. The Independent's article ends with the following list:

Other premiers' foreign policy misjudgements...

Lord Salisbury The Boer War 1899-1902

David Lloyd George The Easter Rising 1916

Anthony Eden The Suez Crisis, 1956

Robert Peel The First Anglo-Afghan War 1839-42

The mission to curb Russian influence by deposing Dost Mohammed and restoring former ruler Shoja Shah, was launched to strengthen British interests. The British took Kandahar, Ghazni and Kabul, captured Dost Mohammed and restored the Shoja to the throne. Their job seemingly done, they withdrew, leaving a garrison of troops and two envoys in Kabul. In 1841, however, there was an uprising, and the garrison was forced to surrender. The retreating British troops and civilians were massacred, bolstering Afghanistan's growing reputation as a graveyard for foreign armies.

Plus ça change, except that Peel's Afghanistan is Blair's Iraq. And Bush?

NOTE Despite all those defeats, there's still a British nation and culture. If we all had to flee Iraq in helicopters tomorrow, there'd be no existential threat to America. There would be an existential threat to the Republican Partei, but that's a separate issue. Eh?