IRAQ-A LESSON OF HISTORY WHICH POLITICIANS FAIL TO LEARN  

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A LESSON OF HISTORY

by

Correlli Barnett

SATURDAY ESSAY

[Daily Mail- Saturday, August 18,2007]

Five years ago, I warned the

 'shock and awe'

victory in Iraq would

end in bloody and

catastrophic failure.

SO HOW DID I KNOW

NAPOLEON TAUGHT ME

FIVE LONG YEARS AGO this month, before the Iraq war, I warned in an article in this newspaper that if Bush and Blair were to attack Saddam Hussein, then Britain and America would become embroiled in a protracted guerrilla war, and suffer a constant drip of casualties'.

I predicted that every American air-strike on civilians, whether deliberate or 'collateral', would prove a propaganda gift to the Iraqi resistance, 'with global TV carrying pictures of Iraqi women, children dead in their ruined homes or maimed in hospital bed'.

And I was certain that, in consequence. 'body-bag anti-Bush disillusionment would grow in the U.S. and world opinion would 'react to the human suffering and regional instability caused by the American aggression'.

Just three weeks after I wrote this article, Tony Blair published the now notorious

'dodgy dossier'

-unscrupulously sexing up the very scanty available intelligence about Saddam's

Weapons of Mass Destruction

intended to persuade public opinion that Saddam must be toppled from power, by force if necessary.

IN FACT BUSH AND BLAIR HAD ALREADY SECRETLY DECIDED ON GOING TO WAR.

It is therefore clear that the grim scenario of protracted conflict I outlined did not feature at all in the minds of Bush and Blair and his advisers.

How was it that a military historian without access to current secret intelligence could accurately predict what would happen (and I am deeply sorry to have been proved right), whereas Bush and Blair and their elaborate intelligence apparatus could make such a catastrophically

WRONG JUDGMENT?

This question is still deeply relevant, because it relates to the soundness of any strategic judgments now being made by

LONDON and WASHINGTON

-for example, about Iran and her alleged nuclear bomb programme, or her supposed support of the insurgency in Iraq, or the threat she allegedly poses to the stability of the

MIDDLE EAST.

There is one simple reason why I as a historian got it right in 2002 with regard to the consequences of an Anglo-American invasion of Iraq.

IT IS THAT I HAD STUDIED previous military interventions which had all begun in sure hope of quick and final success, only to end in protracted fighting and

ULTIMATE DISASTER.

The classic example is Napoleon in Spain during the Peninsular War. In 1808, at the head of the Grande Armee, the most formidable fighting machine of the era. Napoleon swiftly smashed the Spanish army, entered Madrid, toppled the existing monarchy and installed his brother, Jerome, as King.

'Shock and Awe'

and

'regime change'

INDEED!

But the French occupation ignited the patriotic fury of the Spanish people. Soon, a protracted war of ambush and assassination by guerrillas against the French Army began - a war supported by British Forces under Sir Arthur Wellesley (later Duke of Wellington).

With the French spread out across the country vainly trying to crush the insurgency, Wellesley defeated their weakened field army in the battles of Salamanca and Vittoria, and in 1813, finally drove it

OUT OF SPAIN.

The pattern of the French disaster in Spain was broadly repeated by an American army

541,000 strong

failed to crush the Vietcong insurgency supported by the communist government in the North.

As American casualties mounted and American front-line morale sank, Washington finally had to acknowledge the

REALITY of FAILURE

and the American forces were withdrawn in 1973.

HOWEVER

Bush and Blair - both ignorant of military history -couldn't care less about its lessons and, anyway, were pigheadedly determined on war against Saddam out of sheer ideological zealotry.  Remember, Bush believes that Jesus Christ wanted him to spread democracy round the world, while Blair stated that he was 'accountable only to God' for his warlike decisions. -[ a budding convert to Rome he himself was destroying a unique parliamentary democracy back home.]

YET BUSH ALSO GOT IT WRONG FOR ANOTHER REASON

His military guru Donald Rumsfeld, the then U.S. Secretary for defence believed that America's amazing high-tech military capability rendered the lessons of history irrelevant.

Why take note of Napoleon's fate in Spain when you have command and control by computer network; ,you have satellite surveillance and target acquisition; cruise missiles with pinpoint accuracy, and stunning firepower on land sea and air?

AND BUSH GOT IT WRONG

-in yet another way because influential neocon advisers such as Paul Wolfowitz (then deputy U.S. defence Secretary) were certain the fall of Saddam would be followed by the spontaneous emergence of

IRAQI DEMOCRACY

-which in turn would allow a rapid run-down of American occupation forces.

So what lessons do historical examples such as Napoleon's campaign in Spain or America's intervention in Vietnam teach us with regard to our present and future strategy in Iraq?

THE FIRST LESSON is that we should admit that Britain and the United States have decisively failed to achieve the objectives agreed by Bush and Blair five years ago.

Instead of the hoped-for strong democracy ruling a peaceful, prosperous and unified Iraq, we have created a failed state with a feeble and faction-ridden government, and a country driven by ferocious communal violence.

THIS WEEK witnessed the worst terrorist outrage since the Anglo-American invasion, with more than 250 men women and children killed by four car bombs.

Although the American occupation force has now swollen to

165,000

-it is failing to crush the insurgency while the tally of American body-bags now stands at nearly

3,600,

with more than

27,0000

wounded.

Our own garrison troops in Iraq, far from acting as a stabilising force welcomed by the local population, are now subject to increasing lethal ambush while on [patrol and to sporadic bombardment while inside their fortress bases.

They are indeed, as General Sir Richard Dannatt (Chief of the General Staff) has said,

NOW PART OF THE PROBLEM

Back in 2002, I wrote that an eventual military and political stalemate in Iraq would ultimately constitute a victory for Iraqi resistance.

THAT STALEMATE HAS SURELY COME ABOUT

So now, more than ever before, it is time to heed the

DUKE of WELLINGTON'S

dictum that the real test of a

GENERAL

 was to know

WHEN TO RETREAT

AND

DARE TO DO IT!

Will our new Prime Minister Gordon Brown, pass the test?

He has spoken of our duties and responsibilities in Iraq, but surely the overriding

DUTY and RESPONSIBILITY

of a

BRITISH PRIME MINISTER

MUST BE TO THE

BRITISH PEOPLE

 and our

VALIANT SERVICEMEN AND WOMEN.

As he ponders what course to take, Brown could do worse than learn from the example of Clem Attlee's post-war Labour Government when it faced with the intractable problem of the future of

INDIA

-after the end of

BRITISH RULE.

From 1945 to 1947, the Labour Government tried hard to negotiate a compromise settlement between Pandit Nehru's Hindu dominated Congress Party and the Mohammed Ali Jinnah's Muslim League that would enable the British to hand over the whole country to a single

ALL-INDIA

successor regime.

OF COURSE IT ALL CAME TO NOTHING.

[This reminds us  in 2007 of the recent meeting of an 

IRAQ COMMISSION

where there was a great deal of talk and in the end what it amounted to was that the Iraqi representatives were adamant that our troops must stay to keep order -however long it takes. This shows that little has been learnt in the past 60 years.]

COMMUNAL violence between Hindu, Muslim and Sikh was instead growing ever more wide-spread and out of control, with whole districts torched and their inhabitants slaughtered. The British troops in India were too few to keep the peace and ,in any case, there was a danger that they too might be engulfed in the violence with resulting heavy casualties.

So Attlee's Cabinet decided that the only solution must be to partition the India of the Raj between a new Muslim state of Pakistan and a diminished India largely Hindu in population.

More to the point, Attlee appointed a ruthlessly decisive leader Admiral of the Fleet Mountbatten, as the last British Viceroy of India. he was instructed that if last-minute attempts at a compromise between Nehru and Jinnah failed, he was to enforce partition and wind up British rule.

In short, he was told to extricate Britain from a horrendous mess-regardless of the consequences for India or the Indians. In the event. Mountbatten brought forward the date for the ending of the Raj from June 1948 to August 1947, complete with a published time table which wonderfully concentrated everyone's minds.

It is true that before, and after the handover to the successor states of India and Pakistan communal violence degenerated into haste-fuelled mass madness with

600,000 killed

and

14 million refuges on the move.

 YET BRITAIN WAS WELL OUT OF IT.

-and the loss of life among British servicemen was minimal.

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[There is a small section on the French in Algeria in the 1950's to follow shortly]

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[What is so ironic is that the  British having seen at close quarters the dangers of communal violence between the different religious groups did not heed that terrible lesson in ensuring that a careful cultural mix in a small island like Britain was always borne in mind. Regrettably starting over 40 years ago governments DID NOT restrict the numbers of those from the Asian continent particularly those who had no intention of integrating into the island culture and instead when the evidence was before their eyes the leftist do-gooders who had encouraged the mass immigration in desperation decided to call the home indigenous population

RACIST.

with the consequence that stupid and unlearnt lessons of the past  ignored by governments were replaced with many mantra such as

MULTICULTURALISM

which has since been at long last disowned by the very people who jumped with joy at the blame game to hide their many mistakes of the past four decades.

We now hear in August 2007 from the American black leader Jesse Jackson that the ethnic  population  of the UK need to get together to form their own power base and fight for their separate political future.

Haven't we had enough of

SEPARATION

It is time everyone whatever their skin colour stopped dividing instead of uniting a population on such a small island.

Politicians failed to observe the lessons of history and the indigenous population are having to pay the price of being under a constant barrage of demands for special treatment of a sector of the population.

In 2004 alone  350,000 people left the UK to find a life somewhere else where they would not be under a constant attack in protecting their life style and culture and having to be told that they were racist because they objected to the flood of immigration that took no notice of their needs. Ironically even those who settled here decades ago see themselves as also being swamped in cities up and down the country.

There is a well known saying:

'United we stand-Divided we fall.'

The politicians got us into the mess and NOW it is for them to GET US OUT OF IT before we too in the future have to witness a bloodbath because everyone wanted to be treated differently.

Whether we live in

England -Scotland or Wales

let us ALL be islanders and those who think otherwise should take the first ship/train HOME.]

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So the lessons of history are harsh but clear.

ONE:  recognise when the moment has come to abandon a failed enterprise.

TWO:  have the courage to accept the inevitable costs of retreat, whether human or in loss of national prestige.

Now is therefore the time to set a firm date for British withdrawal from Iraq, even if that date is at present kept secret. But it must be up to us and not the Iraqi government to fix that date, just as it was up to us and NOT Indian politicians to fix the date for the end of the British Raj in India.

BUT

What about history's lessons for the future?

FIRST, never expect an intervention in a foreign country will prove an easy in-and-out-job. Instead, count on it that there will be unexpected and unwelcome complications and entanglements.

SECOND, the most important lesson of all: stay out of other people's troubles and mind your own business. Never resort to arms, except in the face of a direct threat

TO NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE.

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[We ASK THE QUESTION- if in 1946 the government of the day decided that it was more important to protect our way-of-life and restrict the number of immigrants to those who would integrate into our society and put the emphasise on a healthier and less crowded  environment rather than allow unlimited immigration which over the past ten years has completely changed the pattern of living in our country to make the indigenous population uneasy and though it is true we are a richer country we are in the main a most unhappy and gridlocked people.  We are now faced with a situation of not only being second to Holland as one of the most crowded places on the planet but now having to concrete over acres of English countryside to accommodate the millions of newcomers who economically it is said will contribute just 45p to our economy as they in the main send their saving back to their own country.

How ironic it is to hear that we would have been a happier and more healthy people if we had restricted our immigration and we would have had more room around us in the villages -towns and even cities in our country and our roads quieter and in the main the language we would hear would be the familiar one. Governments would have less money to waste and people would certainly be fitter and inclined to more outside pursuits.

We have over 60 years become one of the richest countries in the world but as UNESCO has stated one of the most unhappy people in the world. What if we could go back those years and recover the spirit and the sense of space we all enjoyed and tell the government we might not be one of the richest countries in the world but we are one of the happiest. The beneficiaries in the main in our society particularly over the past few decades are the rich who have got richer but the mainstream population is much poorer not only in wealth but in a shrinking countryside and the intensity of life which has made our lives so materialistic and unfulfilled.

It is still not to late to reverse the clock and for politicians to put the emphasis on space and less motorways-vehicles less housing and infrastructure - to a smaller population but one which being healthier and more versatile because unless there is a dramatic change the 1 in 4 with some kind of mental illness will include everyone that lives in our over-crowded-over-taxed and over-watched and over -governed island will all join the exodus to a more sane and less crowded living environment.  ]

In the Daily Mail of Tuesday , August 21, 2007  the following article was  timely, as a survey by the Financial Times admitted we are :

  A NATION

DIVIDED

OVER

MUSLIMS

Nearly half of the population think Muslims have too much political power, a poll has found.

And more than four out of ten think it is impossible to be Muslim and a responsible citizen, according to the survey published yesterday.

Around 40 per cent also dismiss the idea that Muslims suffer unjustified criticism or prejudice.

The poll showed that suspicion of the political face of Islam is tempered by tolerance and openness towards Muslims by the majority of adults.

Non-Muslim British families are nearly twice as likely as their counterparts in France and Spain to accept the marriage of a child to a Muslim, according to the survey for the Financial Times. professor Anthony Glees, director of the Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies at Brunel University, said:

'This is fresh evidence that the majority of British people are fair-minded and welcoming'

'But what they don't want is the development of separate societies, a Muslim Britain and a Christian Britain.

They are opposed to the way some Muslim radicals have interpreted Britain's liberal attitudes as a licence to set up a separate state within a state.'

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[We have been saying the same thing for years. The refusal of the authorities to proceed further into the controversial Muslim mosque utterings  and their obvious softly-softly attitude whenever there may be a case to answer does no favours for the Muslim community because it further reinforces the conception of the majority in the country that the Muslim population are allowed a greater freedom of expression than any others in our community.]

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Correlli Barnett is author of The Verdict of Peace: Britain Between Her Yesterday And The Future. (Pan, £8.99)

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[Font Altered-Bolding & Underlining  Used-Comments in Brackets]

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Let the people speak!

www.makeitanissue.org.uk

www.noliberties.com

[Latest Addition - June07]

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www.eutruth.org.uk

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www.thewestminsternews.co.uk

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www.speakout.co.uk

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Daniel Hannan - Forming an OPPOSITION to the EU

www.telegraph.co.uk.blogs

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GORDON BROWN WANTS TRUST-BUT WHY WON'T HE TRUST YOU?

HELL ON EARTH IN IRAQ

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67% want powers back from EU-ICM poll-June 21-2007-95% of British people want a REFERENDUM

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PETITION

FOR A

REFERENDUM

SIGN TODAY ON LINE

telegraph.co.uk/eureferendum

*  July 18-2007

ALSO

JOIN THE 10 DOWNING STREET PROTEST

Readers can add their support to the growing clamour for a REFERENDUM on the '"REFORM TREATY" by signing up to a 10 Downing Street 0n-line petition

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/EU-treaty-NON/

The  Petition reads as follows:

"We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to guarantee that the British people will be permitted a binding REFERENDUM on any and all attempts to resurrect the EU " CONSTITUTION" (and any or all of its content) regardless of nomenclature."

Deadline for the PETITION is 31st January,2008

Eurofacts 27th July 2007.

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'The Spirit of England'

by

Winston Churchill

In London on St.George's Day -1953

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VOTE

 -2007

TO LEAVE THE EUROPEAN UNION

WITH THE ONLY PARTY WITH A MANDATE

TO SET YOU

 FREE

THE

UK INDEPENDENCE PARTY

www.ukip.org

THE QUESTION THAT THE VOTER MUST ANSWER

‘DO YOU WISH TO BE GOVERNED BY YOUR OWN PEOPLE, LAW AND CUSTOM OR BY THE CORRUPT ,EXPENSIVE UNACCOUNTABLE AND CORRUPT ALIEN BUSYBODY BRUSSELS’

-SIMPLE IS IT NOT?

TO RECLAIM YOUR DEMOCRACY DON'T VOTE FOR THE TRIPARTITE PARTIES IN WESTMINSTER

BUT

SMALL PARTIES THAT SPEAK THEIR MINDS WITHOUT SPIN AND LIES.

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ONLY

PRO-PORTIONAL REPRESENTATION

WILL BRING DEMOCRACY BACK TO THE ENGLISH PEOPLE

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SCOTLAND -ITS PARLIAMENT -WALES-ITS ASSEMBLY-ENGLAND-STILL AWAITS ITS PARLIAMENT-WHY?

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Home Rule for Scotland

WHY NOT

HOME RULE for ENGLAND

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[All underlined words have a separate bulletin]