U.S. missteps, lessons to be learned in Iraq

Jonathan D. Tepperman writes in his Dec. 26 Op-Ed article, “Almost three years into the war, Washington still has very little sense of the size or power of the Sunni insurgency in Iraq. “

A quick read of the history of Iraq will reveal what Washington should have considered before the invasion:

In 1917, when British troops marched into Baghdad, Lt. Gen. Sir Stanley Maude proclaimed, “Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies but as liberators.”

In 1920, Imam Shirazi of Karbala issued a fatwa saying the British occupation violated Islamic law. The Sunnis and Shittes united and rose up in revolt. The British press and public eventually turned against the Colonial Office’s plans to run Iraq.

The lesson that Washington can learn here is that foreign armies that invade and occupy a sovereign nation can expect increased resistance over time, not capitulation and surrender.

ROBERT PIKE

Santa Clarita

*

Re “Winners and losers in Iraq,” editorial, Dec. 24

In spite of President Bush’s dubious anecdote about the voter who eschewed any other identity except that of Iraqi citizen, it’s difficult to conceive of three disparate Middle Eastern cultural groups arriving at a shared sense of nationhood without a strong-arm dictatorship.

The neocons’ new world order was doomed from the start. It’s time to begin an orderly withdrawal of coalition forces from this misadventure. The roughly $6 billion per month being spent on the war could be better used in peace-building efforts. Give Iraqis the resources and let them govern their region in any way they see fit. One caveat: Do it in a manner that ensures sustainable coexistence of Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds -- even if it means a confederation or Persian Gulf commonwealth.

The international community would surely become more involved, while the cost in lives and resources would certainly decline. Like the man said, “Give peace a chance.”

BEN MILES

Huntington Beach

*

Joshua Muravchik approvingly cites the Egyptian scholar Saad Edin Ibrahim’s comment that the U.S. invasion of Iraq had “unfrozen the Middle East just as Napoleon’s 1798 expedition did” to support his contention that democracy had a good year across the Muslim world (“Freedom had a good year,” Opinion, Dec. 24). Perhaps if Muravchik knew the history of the region better, he would have understood the irony in Ibrahim’s remarks.

Napoleon’s invasion certainly did cause changes across the region. But the aftermath of France’s ill-fated Egyptian adventure did not include democracy but rather its antithesis: increasing European power and ultimately direct control over most Muslim countries and, more tellingly for Americans, dictatorship in the very country that supposedly “opened up” the Middle East to the West. Let’s hope the region has better luck with this latest imperial adventure.

MARK LEVINE

Associate Professor

of Middle Eastern History

UC Irvine

*

Iraqis are protesting exorbitant prices at the gas pumps (“Iraqis Pummeled at the Pumps,” Dec. 28), questionable elections, corrupt government contracts and chaos in the government. Mission accomplished! Democracy has been established in Iraq.

Can we leave now to go build another nation?

SHIRLEY CONLEY

Gardena