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2014-06-20 Iraq

Archbishop Jean Sleiman of Baghdad: Foreign intervention won't help

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Posted by AnyoneCanBlog 2014-06-20 00:00|| || Front Page|| [6 views ] Top

#1 All things equal, in the end any Nation-State intervenes by + for its own interests + security, NOT FOR THAT OF ITS ALLIES OR ENEMIES OR NEUTRALS.

Posted by JosephMendiola 2014-06-20 01:39|| 2014-06-20 01:39|| Front Page Top

#2 But can the Archbishop be sure ?

Britain set up a colonial regime in Iraq after a long military campaign during World War I. In response to Iraqi resistance, including a country-wide uprising in 1920, British forces battled for over a decade to pacify the country, using airplanes, armored cars, firebombs and mustard gas.

Air attacks were used to shock and awe, to teach obedience and to force the collection of taxes.

Winston Churchill, as responsible cabinet minister in the early years, saw Iraq as an experiment in high-technology colonial control. Though officials in London sometimes had qualms about the violence, colonial administrators on the ground like Gertrude Bell expressed enthusiasm for the power of the imperial military enterprise. Link

Posted by Besoeker 2014-06-20 03:52|| 2014-06-20 03:52|| Front Page Top

#3 I learned a lot from that link. Found a brief bio of Gertrude Bell, who had a lot to do with the structure of post-WWI Iraq:
Bell is thus both the model of a policymaker and an example of the inescapable frailty and ineptitude on the part of Western powers in the face of all that is chaotic and uncertain in the fashion for "nation-building." Despite the prejudices of her culture and the contortions of her bureaucratic environment, she was highly intelligent, articulate, and courageous. Her colleagues were talented, creative, well informed, and determined to succeed. They had an imperial confidence. They were not unduly constrained by the press or by their own bureaucracies. They were dealing with a simpler Iraq: a smaller, more rural population at a time when Arab nationalism and political Islam were yet to develop their modern strength and appeal.

But their task was still impossible. Iraqis refused to permit foreign political officers to play at founding their new nation. T.E. Lawrence was right to demand the withdrawal of every British soldier and no stronger link between Britain and Iraq than existed between Britain and Canada. For the same reason, more language training and contact with the tribes, more troops and better counterinsurgency tactics-in short a more considered imperial approach-are equally unlikely to allow the US today to build a state in Iraq, in southern Afghanistan, or Iran. If Bell is a heroine, it is not as a visionary but as a witness to the absurdity and horror of building nations for peoples with other loyalties, models, and priorities.

Posted by Anguper Hupomosing9418 2014-06-20 16:07|| 2014-06-20 16:07|| Front Page Top

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