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Blunderov
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RE: virus:Bush, Napoleon And The Crusades
« on: 2004-05-17 09:09:20 » |
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[Blunderov] An historical perspective.
Best Regards
<q>
Bush, Napoleon And The Crusades
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/05/17/opinion/fenton/main617712.shtml
(CBS) Tom Fenton, in his fourth decade with CBS News, has been the network's
Senior European Correspondent since 1979. He comments on international
events from his "Listening Post" in London, and other parts of the world as
well.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Is the United States winning or losing the military campaigns that the Bush
Administration calls The War on Terror?
Don't ask journalists. Their hair-trigger judgments, tuned to instant
analysis, instinctively reach for easy analogies. Vietnam is the obvious
one. "Quagmire" is the word that springs to their minds if the campaigns in
Afghanistan or Iraq seem to be bogging down.
Many journalists were wrong in the initial phases of both campaigns, and
then reversed their judgments when the regimes of both countries were
toppled with relative ease. Their snap conclusions went from serious mistake
to piece of cake. So don't ask journalists how the war is going.
It may be more useful to ask historians how the war is likely to go in the
long run. Historians take the long view.
Henry Laurens, an eminent French specialist on the Arab world, points to
Napoleon Bonaparte's campaign in Egypt (1798-1801). The three-year body
count was 11,500 French soldiers and tens of thousands of Egyptian
civilians.
For the record, the French went in posing as liberators, proclaiming their
goal was to free the Egyptians from the yoke of the Ottoman Empire.
Impoverished, backward, Arabs would welcome French soldiers and the
revolutionary ideas they brought.
The Egyptian Campaign started off well. The big cities of Cairo and
Alexandria fell rapidly. But the French occupation was heavy-handed.
Egyptian cultural and family values were violated.
An Islamic resistance movement grew. Remnants of the old regime began a
guerilla campaign in the countryside, and in the cities several
insurrections had to be harshly repressed. The war widened, and the French
finally lost Egypt against the forces of the British and the Ottomans.
France went on to wage other Arab campaigns - in Algeria in 1830 and Syria
in 1917, again posing as liberators. The Arabs of course saw the French as
imperialists and, even worse, hypocrites.
Harvard historian Samuel P. Huntington, famous for his prophetic article a
decade ago on "The Clash of Civilizations," is equally pessimistic about
Western attempts to "reform" the Arab world.
Huntington sees the 1979 Iranian Revolution as the beginning of a war
between the West and Islam that is progressively destabilizing the world. He
says a small group of Islamic militants, organized in networks that strike
at Western interests, is globalizing the clash of civilizations. According
to Huntington, the American occupation of Afghanistan and of Iraq, has
spread, rather than contained, the war.
He faults American and Western political leaders for believing that the
collapse of communism would usher in a new order in which the rest of the
world would embrace freedom, democracy and the liberal culture of the West.
That vision, he says, is "totally false."
Huntington is convinced that the war in Iraq was a bad idea. Before it
began, he predicted it would be two wars. The war against Saddam Hussein and
his army would be quickly won, but the war against the Iraqi people, which
is now taking an increasing toll of American lives, the United States "will
never win."
These two serious historians, one French and one American, both have grave
doubts about the Bush "crusade" to democratize the Arab world.
The President, of course, no longer uses the "C" word because of its
negative connotations for Arabs, who still remember the Crusaders' bloody
capture of Jerusalem in 1099.
There is another word from the Eleventh Century that still resonates.
"Assassins" were members of a Moslem terrorist sect who were drugged and
brainwashed to stab Christians, at the cost of their own lives. Today's
suicide bombers, like Osama Bin Laden, trace their ideological roots to the
time of the Crusades. History can be instructive.
By Tom Fenton CMMIV, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.</q>
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rhinoceros
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My point is ...
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RE: virus:Bush, Napoleon And The Crusades
« Reply #2 on: 2004-05-17 12:31:11 » |
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[Blunderov]
An historical perspective.
Best Regards
<q>
Bush, Napoleon And The Crusades
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/05/17/opinion/fenton/main617712.shtml
<snip>
Huntington is convinced that the war in Iraq was a bad idea. Before it began, he predicted it would be two wars. The war against Saddam Hussein and his army would be quickly won, but the war against the Iraqi people, which is now taking an increasing toll of American lives, the United States "will never win."
[Jonathan Davis]
Thanks for this B. Interesting, but this analysis misses the most obvious example - The British in Egypt - and one of the best historians, Niall Fergusson.
[rhinoceros]
Excuse my ignorance, Jonathan, but looking at Egypt today and in the last 50 years, I wonder what Fergusson's claim was.
I'll take it that you were not making an argument for Egypt's occupation itself, but only for the feasibility of subdueing peoples.
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Blunderov
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RE: virus:Bush, Napoleon And The Crusades
« Reply #3 on: 2004-05-17 12:35:38 » |
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Jonathan Davis
Sent: 17 May 2004 05:08 PM
Thanks for this B. Interesting, but this analysis misses the most obvious
example - The British in Egypt - and one of the best historians, Niall
Fergusson.
[Blunderov] Thanks for the pointers Jonathan. I'll look into them.
Best Regards
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Casey
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RE: virus:Bush, Napoleon And The Crusades
« Reply #4 on: 2004-05-17 12:58:56 » |
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To Blunderov (et al.):
I posted this last month on the CoV BBS. Niall Ferguson does a fair job of describing the striking similarities between the current experiences of the US and the past experiences of the UK's in Iraq. I thought it was relevant to this discussion, so I'm reposting it here.
Kind regards,
Casey
The Last Iraqi Insurgency
The New York Times ^ | April 18, 2004 | By NIALL FERGUSON OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
LONDON -- From Ted Kennedy to the cover of Newsweek, we are being warned that Iraq has turned into a quagmire, George W. Bush's Vietnam. Learning from history is well and good, but such talk illustrates the dangers of learning from the wrong history. To understand what is going on in Iraq today, Americans need to go back to 1920, not 1970. And they need to get over the American inhibition about learning from non-American history.
President Bush, too, seems to miss the point. "We're not an imperial power," he insisted in his press conference on Tuesday. Trouble is, what he is trying to do in Iraq — and what is going wrong — look uncannily familiar to anyone who knows some British imperial history. Iraq had the distinction of being one of our last and shortest-lived colonies. This isn't 'Nam II — it's a rerun of the British experience of compromised colonization. When Mr. Bush met Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain on Friday, the uninvited guest at the press conference — which touched not only on Iraq but also on Palestine, Cyprus and even Northern Ireland — was the ghost of empire past.
First, let's dispense with Vietnam. In South Vietnam, the United States was propping up an existing government, whereas in Iraq it has attempted outright "regime change," just as Britain did at the end of World War I by driving the Ottoman Turks out of the country. "Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators," declared Gen. Frederick Stanley Maude — a line that could equally well have come from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld this time last year. By the summer of 1920, however, the self-styled liberators faced a full-blown revolt.
A revolt against colonial rule is not the same as a war. Vietnam was a war. Although the American presence grew gradually, it reached a peak of nearly half a million troops by the end of the 1960's; altogether 3.4 million service personnel served in the Southeast Asian theater. By comparison, there are just 134,000 American troops in Iraq today — almost as many men as the British had in Iraq in 1920. Then as now, the enemy consisted of undisciplined militias. There were no regular army forces helping them the way the North Vietnamese supported the Vietcong.
What lessons can Americans learn from the revolt of 1920? The first is that this crisis was almost inevitable. The anti-British revolt began in May, six months after a referendum — in practice, a round of consultation with tribal leaders — on the country's future and just after the announcement that Iraq would become a League of Nations "mandate" under British trusteeship rather than continue under colonial rule. In other words, neither consultation with Iraqis nor the promise of internationalization sufficed to avert an uprising — a fact that should give pause to those, like Senator John Kerry, who push for a handover to the United Nations.
Then as now, the insurrection had religious origins and leaders, but it soon transcended the country's ancient ethnic and sectarian divisions. The first anti-British demonstrations were in the mosques of Baghdad. But the violence quickly spread to the Shiite holy city of Karbala, where British rule was denounced by Ayatollah Muhammad Taqi al-Shirazi — perhaps the historical counterpart of today's Shiite firebrand, Moktada al-Sadr. The revolt stretched as far north as the Kurdish city of Kirkuk and as far south as Samawah, where British forces were trapped (and where Japanese troops, facing a hostage crisis, were holed up last week).
Then, as now, the rebels systematically sought to disrupt the occupiers' communications — then by attacking railways and telegraph lines, today by ambushing convoys. British troops and civilians were besieged, just as hostages are being held today. Then as now, much of the violence was more symbolic than strategically significant — British bodies were mutilated, much as American bodies were at Falluja. By August of 1920 the situation was so desperate that the general in charge appealed to London not only for reinforcements but also for chemical weapons (mustard gas bombs or shells), though these turned out to be unavailable.
And this brings us to the second lesson the United States needs to learn from the British experience. Putting this rebellion down will require severity. In 1920, the British eventually ended the rebellion through a combination of aerial bombardment and punitive village-burning expeditions. It was not pretty. Even Winston Churchill, then the minister responsible for the air force, was shocked by the actions of some trigger-happy pilots and vengeful ground troops. And despite their overwhelming technological superiority, British forces still suffered more than 2,000 dead and wounded.
Is the United States willing or able to strike back with comparable ruthlessness? Unlikely — if last week's gambit of unconditional cease-fires is any indication. Washington seems intent on reining in the Marines and pinning all hope on the handover of power scheduled — apparently irrevocably — for June 30.
This could prove a grave error. For the third lesson of 1920 is that only by quelling disorder firmly and immediately will America be able to achieve its objective of an orderly handover of sovereignty. After all, a similar handover had always been implicit in the mandate system, but only after the revolt had been crushed did the British hasten to install the Hashemite prince Faisal as king.
In fact, this was imperial sleight of hand — Iraq did not become formally independent until 1932, and British troops remained there until 1955. Such an outcome is, of course, precisely what Washington should be aiming for today — American troops will have to keep order well after the nominal turnover of power, and they'll need the support of a friendly yet effective Iraqi government. Right now, this outcome seems far from likely. What legitimacy will any Iraqi government have if the current unrest continues?
There is much, then, to learn from the events of 1920. Yet I'm pessimistic that any senior military commander in Iraq today knows much about it. Late last year, a top American commander in Europe assured me that United States forces would soon be reinforced by Turkish troops; he seemed puzzled when I pointed out that this was unlikely to play well in Baghdad, where there is little nostalgia for the days of Ottoman rule.
Maybe, just maybe, some younger Americans are realizing that the United States has lessons to learn from something other than its own supposedly exceptional history. The best discussion of the 1920 revolt that I have come across this year was in a paper presented at a Harvard University conference by Daniel Barnard, an Army officer who is about to begin teaching at West Point. Tellingly, Mr. Barnard pointed out that the British at first tried to place disproportionate blame for their troubles on outside agitators. Phantom Bolsheviks then; Al Qaeda interlopers today.
But for the most part we get only facile references to Vietnam. People seem to forget how long it took — and how many casualties had to pile up — before public support for that war began to erode in any significant way. When approval fell below 40 percent for the first time in 1968, the total American body count was already past the 20,000 mark. By comparison, a year ago 85 percent of Americans thought the situation in Iraq was going well; that figure is now down to 35 percent and half of Americans want some or all troops withdrawn — though fewer than 700 Americans have died. These polls are chilling. A quick withdrawal would doom Iraq to civil war or theocracy — probably both, in that order.
The lessons of empire are not the kind of lessons Americans like to learn. It's more comforting to go on denying that America is in the empire business. But the time has come to get real. Iraqis themselves will be the biggest losers if the United States cuts and runs. Fear of the wrong quagmire could consign them to a terrible hell.
-- Niall Ferguson, a professor of history at New York University and a senior fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, is the author of the forthcoming "Colossus: The Price of America's Empire."
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
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JD
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RE: virus:Bush, Napoleon And The Crusades
« Reply #5 on: 2004-05-17 19:26:06 » |
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Fergusson was talking about roughly 1880 to 1956. I will post the relevant
section from his book "Colossus" as soon as I get some time. Money point:
Nation building demands a very long commitment, not 2-4 years as expected by
US administrations past and present. Egypt shared many similarities with
Iraq, as did the contemporary political landscape of its initial involvement
in Egypt.
More later (probably in the morning).
Regards
Jonathan
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-virus@lucifer.com [mailto:owner-virus@lucifer.com] On Behalf Of
rhinoceros
Sent: 17 May 2004 17:31
To: virus@lucifer.com
Subject: RE: virus:Bush, Napoleon And The Crusades
[Blunderov]
An historical perspective.
Best Regards
<q>
Bush, Napoleon And The Crusades
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/05/17/opinion/fenton/main617712.shtml
<snip>
Huntington is convinced that the war in Iraq was a bad idea. Before it
began, he predicted it would be two wars. The war against Saddam Hussein and
his army would be quickly won, but the war against the Iraqi people, which
is now taking an increasing toll of American lives, the United States "will
never win."
[Jonathan Davis]
Thanks for this B. Interesting, but this analysis misses the most obvious
example - The British in Egypt - and one of the best historians, Niall
Fergusson.
[rhinoceros]
Excuse my ignorance, Jonathan, but looking at Egypt today and in the last 50
years, I wonder what Fergusson's claim was.
I'll take it that you were not making an argument for Egypt's occupation
itself, but only for the feasibility of subdueing peoples.
----
This message was posted by rhinoceros to the Virus 2004 board on Church of
Virus BBS.
<http://virus.lucifer.com/bbs/index.php?board=61;action=display;threadid=303
12>
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rhinoceros
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RE: virus:Bush, Napoleon And The Crusades
« Reply #6 on: 2004-05-19 10:39:54 » |
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[Casey]
The Last Iraqi Insurgency
By Niall Ferguson
The New York Times, April 18, 2004
<snip>
And this brings us to the second lesson the United States needs to learn from the British experience. Putting this rebellion down will require severity. In 1920, the British eventually ended the rebellion through a combination of aerial bombardment and punitive village-burning expeditions. It was not pretty. Even Winston Churchill, then the minister responsible for the air force, was shocked by the actions of some trigger-happy pilots and vengeful ground troops. And despite their overwhelming technological superiority, British forces still suffered more than 2,000 dead and wounded.
Is the United States willing or able to strike back with comparable ruthlessness? Unlikely — if last week's gambit of unconditional cease-fires is any indication. Washington seems intent on reining in the Marines and pinning all hope on the handover of power scheduled — apparently irrevocably — for June 30.
This could prove a grave error. For the third lesson of 1920 is that only by quelling disorder firmly and immediately will America be able to achieve its objective of an orderly handover of sovereignty. After all, a similar handover had always been implicit in the mandate system, but only after the revolt had been crushed did the British hasten to install the Hashemite prince Faisal as king.
<snip>
[rhinoceros]
I'll give this a similar reply to the one I gave when it was first posted in the BBS.
First, history did not stop with the anexing of prince Faisal in Iraq, did it? Shouldn't we take into account what happened in Iraq from 1920 to our days for our history lesson?
My second objection is with the choice of a goal. If Ferguson speaks as a technical advisor on how to subdue Iraq in an effective and long-lasting way, I can understand his effort. Of course, that does not make me despise his advice any less, if I don't share the goal to which he has set his mind.
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