REWIND TO BRITAIN'S OCCUPATION - Iraq has been through much of this before

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-0704070016apr08,1,5442754.story?coll=chi-opinionfront-hed

By Hugh Dellios is Tribune's foreign editor and a former Middle East correspondent
Published April 8, 2007


The two old books stood out on the shelf at the Mutanabi Street book market in Baghdad -- not for their titles or contents, but for the obvious love and care they received from their previous owner.

Their hard, red covers were delicately wrapped in see-through plastic. Though they were 70 years old when I came across them in 2001, they still had maps neatly folded inside the back cover. The former owner's name, J.A. Bagdadlian, was proudly stamped in blue on the title pages.

Last month, after a suicide bomber blew up the famous market and killed more than 30 Iraqis, I took the books down from my shelf and read them again, this time more closely. What I found was a striking reminder of why it is so important to learn from history.

The two volumes were a detailed, firsthand account of Britain's insurgency-marred occupation of Iraq after World War I. They were written by Sir Arnold Wilson, a military officer who was Britain's acting civil commissioner in the newly created nation after the postwar crumbling of the Ottoman Empire.

In his time, Wilson was the equivalent of Paul Bremer, the American diplomat who headed Iraq's Coalition Provisional Authority after the 2003 invasion. And in language hauntingly similar to the way the Bush administration has portrayed the current conflict, Wilson wrote of the "liberty, justice and prosperity" that the British promised the Iraqis, the bloody revolt that soon broke out, and the constant conflict among Sunnis, Shiites and others.

[Jacobin]

1. 10,000 British soldiers were killed when Iraqis finally expelled them

Something the corporate media is strangely silent on. :eyes:

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. When was that?

The last significant fighting I can find that Britain did in Iraq (before 1990) was 1941 - which doesn't seem to have had significant Britosh dead.

[bluerum]

4. WWI. Breakup of the Ottoman Empire. T.E. Lawrence.

Not sure of the 10,000 casualty number is accurate, but the British did employ arabs to fight on their behalf to break up the Ottoman Empire. They also had significant presence in the region during WWI.

[muriel_volestrangler]

5. That was before the occupation mentioned in the OP

so that wasn't when Britain was 'finally expelled'. The British mandate ended in 1932, but Britain kept an air base there - which was what was important to them in 1941 (plus access to oil, of course). What you describe is what happened when the British occupation started.

[bluerum]

2. The shrub is caught in the infinite loop of historical hubris and political pride. eom

[Laughing Mirror]

6. UN ought to ban US & UK from setting so much as one foot in Iraq for the next 100 years

Or until the oil runs out, whichever comes first.