Past Mistakes- Dare We Hope?

(Though the posts in this blog could be mistaken for being anti-American, they reveal an Americo-phile mindset. We are anguished with their activities, because in our minds, America is an idealised world of freedom and justice. And we are dismayed when they don't practice what they profess. We  unwittingly subscribe to the American Dream.

However, I believe though democracies do go wrong,  they are our only hope. I copy these two pages from the book, "You Are Here"  by Rory Bremner, John Bird and John Fortune, published by Weidenfeld and Nicholson in 2004. It is a damning indictment of the Western World, but the fact that criticism such as this can be written without fear and can get widespread publicity, is the promise of democracy, and in time, collective memory would come to govern against past mistakes is the hope of democracy.)

Iraq was created by the British during the break-up of the Ottoman Empire in the 1920s. Formerly part of Mesopotamia, it had never previously been a country. Rather, it was a collection of tribes: Kurds, Marsh Arabs, Shiites, Sunnis, Turcomans, Jews, Assyrians. Mostly they detested each other, so you would think it would be a tough job for Britain to unite them.

But we did it. Less than three years after we took over in 1924 they all got together and threw us out.  That revolt was put down by British troops, but the Arab tribesmen and the Kurds kept on causing trouble. How did we deal with that? The same way Saddam Hussein dealt with the same problem sixty years later: we bombed them.

The RAF had a big airbase at Habbaniya, outside Baghdad, from where they sent Handley Page biplanes to blitz the tribesmen at the first sign of trouble. In fact, there didn't need to be any trouble at all before a place was bombed. Perfectly peaceful villages got the treatment if the tribesmen were thought to be slow paying their taxes. This was the first systematic bombing of civilians in history. And who was the man behind this policy? The Colonial Secretary, Winston  Churchill. He said,

I look forward to the country being in the condition of an independent native state, friendly to Great Britain, favourable to her commercial interests, and costing hardly any burden on her Exchequer.

That last bit was certainly true, as the Iraqis not only endured the effects of the RAF's bombing raids but were forced to pay for the privilege. But as for the policy itself, the Secretary of State for War, Sir Laming Worthington-Evans, had his doubts, stating,

If the Arab population realized that the peaceful control of Mesopotamia ultimately depends on our intention of bombing women and children. I'm very doubtful if we shall gain that acquiescence of the fathers and husbands of Mesopotamia to which the Secretary of State for the Colonies looks forward.

Shame he never met Donald Rumsfield.

Churchill didn't agree. On 29 March 1919 he ordered:

Gas bombs are required by the 31st Wing for use against recalcitrant Arabs.

At the Air Ministry, Lieutenant Colonel Gossage worried about the effects of gas on the innocent. But those qualms were not shared by Churchill, then Secretary of State for war and Air, the future Colonial Secretary, Prime Minister, and Greatest Briton of All Time.

I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas. I am strongly in favour of using poison gas against uncivilized  tribes. So far, although considerable time and trouble was expense on research during the war, we have not yet evolved suitable and practical gas bombs for use from aircraft.

So there we are, another good idea goes down the tube. Not because we didn't have the heart, but because we didn't have the technology.

The intention throughout the 1920s was to create an independent country and leave with honour. Where have we heart that before?

In the end, the British didn't leave Iraq, with or without honour, until 1958, when we were finally kicked out by Arab nationalists, and the king, the crown prince and the prime minister were ll slaughtered. so much for constitutional monarchy.

Having thus seized power, the new ruler, Abd al-Karim Qasim, began a bloody and repressive regime. But that was OK because Iraq was still a buffer against the Soviet Union, so we tolerated the killings and turned a blind eye to the bloodshed. It was only when Qasim changed his allegiances the following year and started to deal with the Russians that the CIA finally sat up and declared Iraq 'the most dangerous spot in the world'.

With enlightened self-interest in mind, it was time to step in again and engineer a little regime change, and a CIA plot was hatched to assassinate the prime minister.The man at the centre of the  lot being twenty-two-year-old thug, described as having no class. After a series of bungled opportunities, the attempt ended in farce. The young assassin killed the wrong man, winged the prime  minister, and was accidentally shot in the leg by a fellow gunman. He then had to be bundled out of Iraq and shunted around Beirut and Cairo under CIA protection. so who was the CIA's bungling henchman and would-be assassin? Saddam Hussein. Whatever happened to him?

It's a recurring characteristic of American foreign policy that ,having installed or shored up a foreign dictator, the relationship then goes sour and they have an awful lot of trouble getting him out. It happened in Somalia with Said Barre, in Haiti with Baby Doc and in Panama with Noriega. And so it was with Saddam.