Good Labor Day morning Fellow Seekers,
Juan Cole, the University of Michigan historian of the Mideast and prolific blogger at Informed Comment, recently dug up what Winston Churchill, a hero of today’s neocons, thought about the British mission in Iraq at what you could call a moment comparable to today’s U.S. situation.
In case you lost track of this 86-year-old prequel: Britain acquired control of the Mesopotamian region during World War I; British mapmakers created the modern state of Iraq out of three Ottoman districts; and British troops remained in occupation for some decades.
All didn’t go that well. The Iraqis, who thought they had been promised independence, were given a British-chosen foreigner as a king (Faisal). It was the Brits who, by choosing Faisal, began the tradition of having the majority Shiite country they had created run by Sunnis. The Iraqis frequently rebelled, Brits kept bombing and killing Iraqis to put down the rebellions, which kinda made the locals madder.
(If you want a quick overview of this chapter of Iraqi history, I’ll immodestly mention that I summarized the British occupation just before the current Iraq war began in a piece that is still available on the Strib’s website. If you skip the first 5,000 years of Iraqi history, you’ll find the section on the British occupation of the second page, under the subhead “British Rule.”)
Anyway, the rising politician, Winston Churchill was sort of in charge of the Iraq project from his post as secretary of state for the colonies, Feb. 1921-Oct. 1922. What Prof. Cole unearthed is the report that Churchill sent to his boss, Prime Minister Lloyd George, on Sept. 21, 1921.
The full missive is available on Cole’s site. Read it for yourself and play the historical analogy game (it may not be as relevant as your own favorite analogy but you gotta admit this, Iraq is represented by Iraq).
In summary, Churchill said that he felt he’d been given an impossible task. He didn’t have enough troops, the neighbors were menacing and causing problems, King Faisal (that’s him at right) and his officials were fools or knaves, the operation was costing a fortune and running up the deficit, the public at home had turned against the occupation, the opposition party was gaining popularity by criticizing it and promising to withdraw, the benefits of the Iraqi oil weren’t turning out to be worth the trouble and aggravation.
Churchill’s suggestion was to tell the Iraqi government that it had to beg the Brits to stay and to promise that they would start cooperating. He seemed quite worried that if the Iraqis were faced with the threat of British withdrawal they actually would do the begging and then the the Brits might have to stay.
The money quote comes at the end:
“At present we are paying eight millions a year for the privilege of living on an ungrateful volcano out of which we are in no circumstances to get anything worth having.”
As it turns out, the Brits did stay for decades. Whether they ultimately “got anything worth having” is a question for another day.
What think?
This is an interesting analogy. The real question is related to the one you leave for another day. What I think makes the situation different was the motives England had for obtaining and retaining control of this mandate over the post-Ottoman Empire which it acquired as a result of the post-Versailles treaties. At the time, I have read, Iraq waas known to have some oil but it was not known how much. There were also some conerns about oil shortages during and after WWI but in the mid-to late 1920’s and for many years thereafter, there was an oil glut leading to very low prices internationally. The control of Iraq at the time had as much to do with blockading Soviet Russia as it did with acquiring control over potential future oil supplies. Then, as now, the motives for amneuvering in this area of the world were not as they appeared with many layers of hidden agendas.
Of course the whole global complexion has changed quite a bit too. The future of Iraq is much more important to the world as a whole now than it was in the 1920’s.
BTW, I think the talk on the Vietnam analogy completely sidestepped the obvious connection between the two countries. There are differences (of course) and all analogy fails if pushed too hard. The similarity is in the slaughter that would occur if US troops were withdrawn tomorrow. It would be much worse than Darfur.