Lawrence of Arabia on Iraq

Or, "History repeats itself for the 45,896,327th time."

“You will kill ten of our men, and we will kill one of yours, and in the end it will be you who tire of it.”

Ho Chi Minh

“Don’t send your military to fight nationalists on their own soil.”

Minor Heretic

The British learned this in America and Afghanistan. The Soviets learned this in Afghanistan. The French learned this in Viet Nam. The United States learned this in Viet Nam, forgot it, and is learning it once again in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The British experience in America is educational. The exact political relationship was different from ours today with the Middle East, but the general economic objectives are the same: maintain compliant states so as to extract natural resources. In both cases the colonized peoples started thinking and acting nationalistically, threatening the economic benefits enjoyed by the empire.

In the late 18th century the British were short on (semi) willing manpower, so they raised enlistment bonuses and hired mercenaries. They went deeply into debt. Much of the British populace wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about the war. The British Army was beset by problems of supply, transportation, and rampant corruption. They won most of the battles of the American Revolution. Unfortunately for them, they lost a couple of big ones called Saratoga and Yorktown. In both these cases the loss was not about tactical military capability. As much as anything the British were defeated by long, fragile supply lines. General Washington operated on the principle that as long as his army was intact, he hadn’t lost. As long as his army was intact, the British had to stay in the field, spending money, losing troops, and generally getting worn down.

In Iraq today we have:
Mercenaries
Debt financing
Supply/transportation problems
Rampant corruption in both the Iraqi government and our own procurement process
Long, tenuous supply lines
Lack of popular support at home
Deteriorating military recruiting, morale and readiness

In the 19th century in Afghanistan the British managed to gain the upper hand militarily several times and dominate the Afghan kings. Still, after a while Afghanistan became just too difficult to manage and they left.

It’s not surprising, any of it. Afghanistan has been a strategic crossroads for thousands of years. The list of invaders stretches from Alexander the Great to the United States. As a result of centuries of practice, those who live in that region have become adept at guerrilla warfare, cunning in politics, and patient enough to wait out and wear down all invaders.

Likewise, the Iraqi resistance in all its forms has the advantage over us. Time is on their side, the population is on their side, and the battlefield situation is on their side.

Below is a piece from the “history repeats itself” category, by none other that Lawrence of Arabia himself.

First I’ll add a factoid that resonates: Lawrence wrote, “When conditions became too bad to endure longer, they decided to send out as High commissioner the original author of the present system, with a conciliatory message to the Arabs that his heart and policy have completely changed.” In our case, James Baker III, Secretary of State under George Bush Senior, sent a message through April Glaspie, then Ambassador to Iraq, to Saddam Hussein a week before he invaded Kuwait. The gist was that Arab vs. Arab conflicts were of no interest to us. In other words, “Go ahead, invade Kuwait, see if we care.” A million or so Iraqi deaths later, when the policy became a political shambles, guess who was appointed to chair the Iraq Study Committee and get us out of the mess? You guessed it: James Baker III.

22 August, 1920
A Report on Mesopotamia by T.E. Lawrence
Ex.-Lieut.-Col. T.E. Lawrence,
The Sunday Times, 22 August 1920

[Mr. Lawrence, whose organization and direction of the Hedjaz against the Turks was one of the outstanding romances of the war, has written this article at our request in order that the public may be fully informed of our Mesopotamian commitments.]

The people of England have been led in Mesopotamia into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honour. They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information. The Baghdad communiques are belated, insincere, incomplete. Things have been far worse than we have been told, our administration more bloody and inefficient than the public knows. It is a disgrace to our imperial record, and may soon be too inflamed for any ordinary cure. We are to-day not far from a disaster.

The sins of commission are those of the British civil authorities in Mesopotamia (especially of three 'colonels') who were given a free hand by London. They are controlled from no Department of State, but from the empty space which divides the Foreign Office from the India Office. They availed themselves of the necessary discretion of war-time to carry over their dangerous independence into times of peace. They contest every suggestion of real self- government sent them from home. A recent proclamation about autonomy circulated with unction from Baghdad was drafted and published out there in a hurry, to forestall a more liberal statement in preparation in London, 'Self-determination papers' favourable to England were extorted in Mesopotamia in 1919 by official pressure, by aeroplane demonstrations, by deportations to India.

The Cabinet cannot disclaim all responsibility. They receive little more news than the public: they should have insisted on more, and better. They have sent draft after draft of reinforcements, without enquiry. When conditions became too bad to endure longer, they decided to send out as High commissioner the original author of the present system, with a conciliatory message to the Arabs that his heart and policy have completely changed.*

Yet our published policy has not changed, and does not need changing. It is that there has been a deplorable contrast between our profession and our practice. We said we went to Mesopotamia to defeat Turkey. We said we stayed to deliver the Arabs from the oppression of the Turkish Government, and to make available for the world its resources of corn and oil. We spent nearly a million men and nearly a thousand million of money to these ends. This year we are spending ninety-two thousand men and fifty millions of money on the same objects.

Our government is worse than the old Turkish system. They kept fourteen thousand local conscripts embodied, and killed a yearly average of two hundred Arabs in maintaining peace. We keep ninety thousand men, with aeroplanes, armoured cars, gunboats, and armoured trains. We have killed about ten thousand Arabs in this rising this summer. We cannot hope to maintain such an average: it is a poor country, sparsely peopled; but Abd el Hamid would applaud his masters, if he saw us working. We are told the object of the rising was political, we are not told what the local people want. It may be what the Cabinet has promised them. A Minister in the House of Lords said that we must have so many troops because the local people will not enlist. On Friday the Government announce the death of some local levies defending their British officers, and say that the services of these men have not yet been sufficiently recognized because they are too few (adding the characteristic Baghdad touch that they are men of bad character). There are seven thousand of them, just half the old Turkish force of occupation. Properly officered and distributed, they would relieve half our army there. Cromer controlled Egypt's six million people with five thousand British troops; Colonel Wilson fails to control Mesopotamia's three million people with ninety thousand troops.

We have not reached the limit of our military commitments. Four weeks ago the staff in Mesopotamia drew up a memorandum asking for four more divisions. I believe it was forwarded to the War Office, which has now sent three brigades from India. If the North-West Frontier cannot be further denuded, where is the balance to come from? Meanwhile, our unfortunate troops, Indian and British, under hard conditions of climate and supply, are policing an immense area, paying dearly every day in lives for the wilfully wrong policy of the civil administration in Baghdad. General Dyer was relieved of his command in India for a much smaller error, but the responsibility in this case is not on the Army, which has acted only at the request of the civil authorities. The War Office has made every effort to reduce our forces, but the decisions of the Cabinet have been against them.

The Government in Baghdad have been hanging Arabs in that town for political offences, which they call rebellion. The Arabs are not at war with us. Are these illegal executions to provoke the Arabs to reprisals on the three hundred British prisoners they hold? And, if so, is it that their punishment may be more severe, or is it to persuade our other troops to fight to the last?

We say we are in Mesopotamia to develop it for the benefit of the world. All experts say that the labour supply is the ruling factor in its development. How far will the killing of ten thousand villagers and townspeople this summer hinder the production of wheat, cotton, and oil? How long will we permit millions of pounds, thousands of Imperial troops, and tens of thousands of Arabs to be sacrificed on behalf of colonial administration which can benefit nobody but its administrators?

*Sir Percy Cox was to return as High Commissioner in October, 1920 to form a provisional Government.

Comments

[Steve and Kathy]

History speaks for itself but G.W. probably goes with Henry Ford's statement, "History is bunk".