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Secretary Rumsfeld called the War in Iraq "a brilliant plan" well -
was it ?
We quickly beat a third class or fourth class demoralized
military after a dozen years of sanctions and a 12 year low level air war in a
few weeks - so what ? What mattered was the day after - The main reason Daddy
Bush did not drive to Baghdad in 1991 was concern about what
happened next - chaos, instability, a long and nasty occupation - (there were a
lot of other reasons, along with a unrealistic hope the regime would be
overthrown) but given the importance of post war planning it is shocking that so
little was done in 2002 - WHY?
Just because of that big fear - if the issue of what next became
important it takes the edge off the passion for war - A long and difficult
occupation was unenviable - in 1991 and in 2003 - and in the
1820's
This is not enough. What Washington needs is a "reserve of military
strength [capable of] ... supplying an army always in a high state of efficiency
and capable of being hurled at a moment's notice upon any point". These words
are not those of an American neo-conservative in 2003, but were articulated by
the British viceroy of India, Lord Curzon, in 1909.
During the first world war, what was then the Ottoman province of Mesopotamia became a battleground between Turkish and British empires. The low point of Britain's Middle East campaign came when 12,000 soldiers - more than half composed of Indian divisions - surrendered the garrison to Turkish forces in May 1916 after a siege which lasted 147 days. Of the troops who left Kut with their captors, more than 4,000 died either on their way to captivity or in prisoner-of-war camps. In four years of fighting, 31,000 British and Indian lives were lost, pockmarking the country with graves and pyres. The birth of what would become modern-day Iraq was a painful one. Mesopotamia was Britain's prize after the first world war - and like today, its peoples struggled against the occupying forces. Indian troops were used to suppress the country's nationalist uprising in the summer of 1920. Like today's American forces, the 60,000 British and Indian troops securing Mesopotamia were never engaged in battle, facing instead hit-and-run raids from the desert. More than 1,000 Indian soldiers and 8,000 Arab fighters were either killed or captured in a few weeks. Despite Britain's military prowess, Iraq slowly slipped from its grasp. But Washington appears indifferent to the lessons of history. The subtle shift from hegemony to empire could again see troops from the subcontinent becoming the tools of a great power's foreign policy. America refuses to believe in the empirical evidence of its own empire. Its people are suspicious of foreign entanglements - witness the declining support for the Iraqi occupation. Sizeable numbers of Pakistani and Indian troops would enable thousands of American soldiers to return home. Left to face the growing anger engendered by the chaos that has replaced the power vacuum brought about by the fall of Saddam, troops from India and Pakistan - countries that opposed the war - will be left to secure the peace in the face of guerrilla attacks and organized resistance. If it looks, sounds and feels like empire redux, that is because it is. |
