First things first. First, Bring the Troops Home Now and End the Occupation. Once Iraqis succeed in kicking out foreign occupiers, demand Reparations Now!
[I'd bet, though, that Nathan won't be arguing for reparations to Iraqis once Iraqis free themselves from the foreign occupation, because any Iraqi government that will result from a successful Iraqi liberation movement that may emerge won't be to his liking.]
It took about 40 years for Iraqis to liberate themselves from the British in 1958:
***** New York Times July 20, 2003 Britain Tried First. Iraq Was No Picnic Then. By JOHN KIFNER
The public, the distinguished military analyst wrote from Baghdad, had been led "into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honor."
"They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information," he said. "The Baghdad communiqués are belated, insincere, incomplete. Things have been far worse than we have been told, our administration more bloody and inefficient than the public knows."
He added: "We are today not far from a disaster."
Sound familiar?
That was T. E. Lawrence - Lawrence of Arabia - writing in The Sunday Times of London on Aug. 22, 1920, about the British occupation of what was then called Mesopotamia. And he knew. For it was Lieutenant Colonel Lawrence and the intrepid British adventuress Gertrude Bell who, more than anyone else, were responsible for the creation of what was to become Iraq. A fine mess they made of it, too.
During the First World War, Lawrence had been present at the birth of modern Arab nationalism and fought alongside its guerrillas to victory against the Ottoman Empire, only to see the same guerrilla tactics turned against the British in a rebellion in Iraq.
It is perhaps instructive to look back on that earlier effort by the leading Western power to remake the Middle East as the American occupation of Iraq appears increasingly beset.
It has not been going well, especially in Sunni-controlled central Iraq. Rather than being hailed as liberators, the American troops face "a classical guerrilla-type campaign" there that is increasingly organized, their new regional commander, Gen. John P. Abizaid, said last week. A Pentagon-approved independent body of experts criticized the lack of postwar planning. Soldiers of the Army's Third Infantry Division, have been told they are not going home as planned. The cost, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld now says, is running about $3.9 billion a month, nearly twice earlier estimates, and tens of thousands of troops may have to remain for years to come.
At the same time, the rationale for war is increasingly questioned. Terror weapons have not yet been found in Iraq, nor have links to Al Qaeda. The Bush administration is scrambling to explain how allegations based on forged documents purporting to show Iraqi uranium purchases from Niger found their way into the State of the Union address. All this has not helped build global support: last week, India rejected an American request to send some 17,000 peacekeeping troops.
Meanwhile, clashes and increasingly sophisticated ambushes have been running at a rate of a dozen a day; by week's end, at least 33 American soldiers had been killed in hostilities since May 1, the date when President Bush declared that major combat was over.
Ominously, Iraqi crowds have emerged to dance and cheer around burned-out American Humvees.
Many American officers had sensed trouble ahead. As their armor clanked north to Baghdad, officers in the First Marine Division said over and over that the war was no problem; the difficulties would come with the rebuilding of Iraq. Indeed, in the face of American might and technology, the enemy, for the most part, simply did not show up for the big battles.
The British had a tougher time of it in World War I; they lost thousands of troops - most of them Indian - in a five-month Turkish siege of Kut. But they regrouped and captured Baghdad on March 11, 1917. Maj. Gen. Stanley Maude greeted the populace with a speech that could have been written today: "Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators."
Well, not quite, General....
By 1920, the country was in full rebellion, from Shiite tribesmen in the south to Kurds in the north. There were some 425 deaths on the British side and an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 among the Iraqis.
Hoping to restore order, the British, at the urging of Bell and Lawrence, switched Feisal's franchise to Iraq in 1921, although he had never set foot there. In a rigged plebiscite, the new king got 96 per cent of the votes. King Feisal and his strongman prime minister, Nuri as-Said, managed to solidify Sunni minority control over the rest of the country. But there was frequent turmoil.
IN response, the British turned to technology, with their air force commander, Arthur (Bomber) Harris, boasting that his biplanes had taught Iraqis that "within 45 minutes a full-sized village can be practically wiped out and a third of its inhabitants killed or wounded." Winston Churchill, who, as colonial secretary, presided over the creation of Iraq, Trans-Jordan and Palestine, called Iraq an "ungrateful volcano."
Still, it took 35 years for the disaster that Lawrence predicted to become total. Iraq gained independence in 1931, but the British-sponsored monarchy hung on and guarded British interests until 1958, when the royal family was murdered and dragged through the streets....
<http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/20/weekinreview/20KIFN.html> *****
This time around, let's at least double our productivity and help Iraqis achieve independence within the next couple of decades -- so that Justin can see a Free State of Iraq in his lifetime.
At 9:35 AM -0400 7/22/03, Nathan Newman wrote:
>And where is all the Afghanistan agitation now that the US is
>wimping out on promises to provide funding for the people there?
Only the most gullible ever believed any such US "promises" for funding. The USG's "promises" for funding are worse than spam advertising Internet scams. In fact, before the US invasion of Iraq began, a satire parodying international "fund-transfer" scams <http://www.politechbot.com/p-04372.html> widely circulated on the Net to the great merriment of readers. -- Yoshie
* Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://solidarity.igc.org/>