On Jul 7, 7:52 am, "Bill Bonde { ''Soylent Diesel is People'')"
<tributyltinpa...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> "malcom.khan" wrote:
>
> > On Jul 7, 7:17 am, "PJ O'Donovan" <Xent...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> > > Monday, July 07, 2008
>
> > > The Times" of London on victory in Iraq:
>
> > > Excerpt:
>
> > > "American and Iraqi forces are driving Al-Qaeda in Iraq out of its
> > > last redoubt in the north of the country in the culmination of one
of
> > > the most spectacular victories of the war on terror. After being
> > > forced from its strongholds in the west and centre of Iraq in the
past
> > > two years, Al-Qaeda's dwindling band of fighters has made a defiant
> > > "last stand" in the northern city of Mosul...".
>
..
> > WW1 has not yet finished mate , its still going on in the middle east
..
..
> > since the west invaded in 1914 and wont end until the west is pushed
> > out
>
> Kook Alert.
A Re****t on Mesopotamia by T.E. Lawrence
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22 August, 1920
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 te 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 de****tations 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 de****d, 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.
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