Josh Marshall is getting updates on current events in Iraq:
I refer to this entire mess as the second Intifada of Iraq. The first Intifida was last August in Fallujah when US soldiers killed 15-17 Iraqis and Fallujah fell into revolt.
I wonder how many of the armchair generals or even the ones in the field are aware of how Iraq’s last liberation by a Western democracy worked out.
Telegraph | Opinion | This Vietnam generation of Americans has not learnt the lessons of history:
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.
The words of Lieutenant General Sir Frederick Stanley Maude — “Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators” — in 1917 sound eerily like the propaganda surrounding the current war. [more links here]
It took the rest of the year — 1920 — to restore order: what if the current strife will still be raging come the end of this year? And bear in mind that three years elapsed from the general’s words to when order was restored. So much for bringing the troops home by Christmas Election Day.
And what does this mean for the idea that the Iraqi people would welcome the coalition forces as liberators? How does it match up against the assumptions that the Iraqis were somehow of one mind and would take the initiative to build their own nation once Saddam Hussein was gone? How many casualties will US forces have to suffer before these or similar questions are answered?