tom green
British forces sustain 2,000 casualties in Iraq
Sun Apr 11, 2004 05:00
200.64.85.181

“ British forces sustained over 2,000 casualties in Iraq”
(This was in 1920 ---BUT---)
Americans Have Not Learned The Lessons Of History
By Niall Ferguson, The Telegraph - UK 4-9-4
Excerpted from; http://www.rense.com/general51/not.htm

Around this time last year I had a conversation in Washington that summed up what was bound to go wrong for America in Iraq.I was talking to a mid-ranking official in the US Treasury about American plans for the post-war reconstruction of the Iraqi economy. …

The lessons of history come a poor second, and only recent history - preferably recent American history - gets considered.

For many Americans - including the Democratic contender for the presidency, John Kerry - the only history relevant to American foreign policy is the history of the Vietnam War…

There was amazement last year when I pointed out in the journal Foreign Affairs that in 1917 a British general had occupied Baghdad and proclaimed:
"Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators."

By the same token, scarcely any American outside university history departments is aware that within just a few months of the formal British takeover of Iraq, there was a full-scale anti-British revolt.

What happened in Iraq last week so closely resembles the events of 1920 that only a historical ignoramus could be surprised.

It began in May, just after the announcement that Iraq would henceforth be a League of Nations "mandate" under British trusteeship. (Nota- bene, if you think a handover to the UN would solve everything.)

Anti-British demonstrations began in Baghdad mosques, spread to the Shi'ite holy centre of Karbala, swept on through Rumaytha and Samawa - where British forces were besieged - and reached as far as Kirkuk.

Contrary to British expectations, Sunnis, Shi'ites and even Kurds acted together. Stories abounded of mutilated British bodies. By August the situation was so desperate that the British commander appealed to London for poison gas bombs or shells (though these turned out not to be available). By the time order had been restored in December - with a combination of aerial bombardment and punitive village-burning expeditions British forces had sustained over 2,000 casualties and the financial cost of the operation was being denounced in Parliament.

In the aftermath of the revolt, the British were forced to accelerate the transfer of power to a nominally independent Iraqi government, albeit one modeled on their own form of constitutional monarchy.

I am willing to bet that not one senior military commander in Iraq today knows the slightest thing about these events. ..

For the time being US policy in Iraq is in the hands of a generation who have learnt nothing from history except how to repeat other people's mistakes.



- Niall Ferguson's book Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire will be published next month by Penguin

© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2004. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2004/04/10/do1003.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/04/10/ixnewstop.html