Go Back to the B3 Home Page
Complaints, compliments, arguments? Email me.
[<< ""] [Archive Index] [>>"The Myth of 'Shock & Awe'"]
05/28/2003 Archived Entry: "The parallels are eerie."
The parallels are eerie.
I know this has all been pointed out in a lot of places already, but I was struck by the sense of history repeating itself while re-reading 'Iraq's Unruly Century' (Adobe Acrobat format) in last month's Smithsonian Magazine. A Few snippets from the article sound extremely familiar:
“Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies but as liberators,” proclaimed Gen. Stanley Maude, commander of the British forces, as his troops marched into Baghdad in 1917....In 1920, the newly formed League of Nations granted Britain a “mandate ” over Iraq —a kind of pre-independence trusteeship. It gave Britain the right to raise and spend revenues,to appoint officials and to make and enforce laws... Though the mandate approach was flawed,says historian David Fromkin, it appealed to League members because it gave the Allied powers control over territories without endorsing imperialism outright....
Nationalist protests increased, and in the summer of 1920, one leader, Imam Shirazi of Karbala, issued a fatwa, or religious decree, that British rule violated Islamic law. He called for a jihad, or holy war, against the British — and for once Sunnis, Shiites and rival sheikhdoms united in a common cause.The armed rebellion spread from Karbala and Najaf,in the center,to the south of the country,with uprisings by Kurds in the north as well.
Wilson came down hard, ordering aerial bombardments, the machine-gunning of rebels and the destruction of whole towns. “The British overreaction made things much worse,” says Janet Wallach, author of a biography of Bell, Desert Queen. An aghast Bell wrote to her mother,“We have underestimated the fact that this country is really an inchoate mass of tribes which can’t as yet be reduced to any system. The Turks didn’t govern and we have tried to govern - and failed.” Some 6,000 Iraqis and 500 British and Indian soldiers perished before the revolt was finally put down in October. By
then, the British press and public had turned against Colonial Office plans to run Iraq. As The Times of London had put it three months earlier, “How much longer are valuable lives to be sacrificed in the vain endeavour to impose upon the Arab population an elaborate and expensive administration which they never asked for and do not want?”
What was that old saying about those who don't learn from history?
Replies: 2 people speak up
I wonder what spin, exactly, the right is using on this. Probably trying to hide history first. Then, maybe something about technology differences and the era of 9/11 or some such nonsense.
Just wondering out loud how they argue the inarguable...
Posted by Factchecker @ 05/28/2003 12:36 PM NY
Fortunately for us, the US is not subject to the tides of history.
Yippee, we're Number 1!
Posted by Metropolitan99 @ 05/28/2003 10:49 PM NY
