BRITS SAW IRAQ MESS COMING 90 YEARS AGO

Yeah, so, one of thing that really pisses me off about the whole Iraquagmire thing is that so many of us saw this mess coming. Any time you occupy a city without completely overwhelming it (and without be completely welcome) you're going to run into guerrilla fighters. That's all there is to it. It's just too damn easy to hide in a city full of buildings. Add this to the already bloody history of the Middle East and you get an equation that sums up in way too much blood lost and money spent.

Mind you, it wasn't just us "naysayers" and "blame America first" types--it wasn't even just the experienced experts in analyzing battlefields. It wasn't just George H.W. Bush who thought going into Iraq was a bad idea--it was the British. No, not Blair--he's Bush's lapdog. And yes, while the British people were largely against their country's involvement, I'm not talking about them either. I'm talking about the Brits who walked the Earth ninety years ago.

It seems Great Britain needed a military victory to save serious face, so they decided in late 1916 to invade Baghdad. Apparently, it folded quickly under the BritArmy's force, but after that it got way messy. According to [http://www.robert-fisk.com/articles403.htm|an article] at Robert-Fisk.com, things devolved into guerrilla warfare, sectarian violence and more.

Sound familiar?

Here's some more from Fiske's 2004 article:

They came as liberators but were met by fierce resistance outside Baghdad. Humiliating treatment of prisoners and heavy-handed action in Najaf and Fallujah further alienated the local population. A planned handover of power proved unworkable. Britain's 1917 occupation of Iraq holds uncanny parallels with today - and if we want to know what will happen there next, we need only turn to our history books...

Yep, they even got all Abu Ghraiby and whatnot.

So, the next time someone even tries to suggest that we couldn't see the mess in Iraq coming, point them to 1917 and tell them to study history before sucking down both feet, shoes and all (and plenty of crow to boot). .

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