<![CDATA[
<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
Past Mideast Invasions Faced Unexpected Perils<br><br>March 19, 2003<br>Wall Street Journal<br>March 20, 2002<br><br>DRUMBEAT OF WAR<br><br>Past Mideast Invasions Faced Unexpected Perils<br><br>Invaders Have Been Repelled While Arab Casualties Mount<br><br>By HUGH POPE and PETER WALDMAN <br>Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL<br><br>As President Bush steers the U.S. toward war, history<br>offers a sobering lesson.<br><br>For two centuries, foreign powers have been conquering<br>Mideast lands for their own purposes, promising to<br>uplift Arab societies along the way. Sometimes they have<br>modernized cities, taught new ideas and brought<br>technologies.<br><br>But in nearly every incursion, both sides have endured a<br>raft of unintended consequences. From Napoleon's drive<br>into Egypt through Britain's rule of Iraq in the 1920s<br>to Israel's march into Lebanon in 1982, Middle East<br>nations have tempted conquerors only to send them<br>reeling.<br><br>Little wonder that even many Arabs who revile Saddam<br>Hussein view the prospect of a U.S.-led invasion of Iraq<br>with trepidation. "Unless the Americans are far more<br>subtle than they've ever had the capacity to be, and<br>more subtle than the [colonial] British, it's going to<br>end in tears," predicts Faisal Istrabadi, an Iraqi- born<br>lawyer in Michigan who has worked with the State<br>Department on plans to rebuild Iraq's judiciary. "The<br>honeymoon will be very brief."<br><br>Again and again, Westerners have moved into the Mideast<br>with confidence that they can impose freedom and<br>modernity through military force. Along the way they<br>have miscalculated support for their invasions, both<br>internationally and in the lands they occupy. They have<br>anointed cooperative minorities to help rule resentful<br>majorities. They have been mired in occupations that<br>last long after local support has vanished. They have<br>met with bloody uprisings and put them down with brute<br>force.<br><br>HISTORY REPEATS<br><br>See a chart of Western invasions0 in the Middle East,<br>their outcomes and the lessons learned.<br><br>"We tend to overlook a basic rule: that people prefer<br>bad rule by their own kind to good rule by somebody<br>else," says Boston University historian David Fromkin,<br>author of a 1989 classic on colonialism's failures in<br>the Mideast called "A Peace to End All Peace."<br><br>Mr. Bush says this invasion will be different. He has<br>broadened his war aims in recent weeks from removing Mr.<br>Hussein and any weapons of mass destruction to<br>transforming Iraq into a beacon of freedom in the Middle<br>East. In a news conference March 6, Mr. Bush said U.S.<br>troops would remain to help run Iraq until a new,<br>representative government could take control. With the<br>passion of a convert to nation-building, he spoke<br>movingly of confronting totalitarianism, of spreading<br>"God's gift" of liberty "to each and every person," and<br>of how "Iraqi lives and freedom matter greatly to us."<br><br>Napoleon proclaimed a similar new era of equality and<br>respect for "true Muslims" as he marched into Cairo in<br>1798, killing a thousand members of Egypt's ruling<br>caste. He was accompanied by 100 French scientists,<br>researching an encyclopedia and spreading European<br>"enlightenment" to bemused Egyptian intellectuals.<br><br>"Peoples of Egypt, you will be told that I have come to<br>destroy your religion," said Napoleon as he entered<br>Cairo. "Do not believe it! Reply that I have come to<br>restore your rights!"<br><br>Napoleon's real goals involved France's colonial rivalry<br>with Britain. He sought to outflank the British and<br>frustrate their efforts to find a new route to India.<br>But the French committed a fatal error, repeated by<br>nearly all Western powers since: attempting to divide<br>and rule by appointing minority groups to govern hostile<br>majority populations.<br><br>The French teamed up with fellow Christians -- members<br>of Egypt's minority Coptic sect -- to govern the<br>majority Muslims. Resentment grew as hundreds of<br>unveiled women paraded around town with the French<br>interlopers, flouting Islamic ideals of modesty. "One<br>saw low-class women mixing with the French because of<br>their liberality and their liking for the female sex,"<br>wrote Egyptian historian Abd al-Rahman al-Jabarti.<br><br>Months after the French arrival, Islamic clerics stirred<br>a mob to rebellion, killing 300 Frenchmen. In revenge,<br>the French bombarded Cairo. French troops stormed the<br>city, killing 3,000 Cairenes and ransacking the chief<br>mosque of al-Azhar on horseback. "The people of Cairo<br>were overwhelmed with disdain, abasement at the<br>despoiling and looting of wealth by the French," Mr. al-<br>Jabarti observed.<br><br>The French left within three years. Their influence<br>remained in a modernizing dynasty that rose to power<br>after the French retreat, employing French methods to<br>make economic gains. But France itself lost both money<br>and men from its Egyptian adventure.<br><br>Britain came next to Egypt, in 1882. Its takeover<br>secured the Suez Canal route to its Indian Empire, but<br>soon triggered a bloody revolt by nationalist Egyptian<br>officers. For the next 40 years, British administrators<br>ruled Egypt from behind the scenes in what was called<br>the "veiled protectorate," fashioning themselves as<br>liberators of Egypt's feudal peasants. But several<br>incidents helped make Egypt a center of anti-Western<br>fervor, among them the brutal punishment of villagers<br>when a fracas with British officers out on a pigeon hunt<br>left an officer dead.<br><br>British troops landed in what's now Iraq in 1914, as<br>part of Britain's campaign against the Ottoman Turks,<br>allies of Germany in World War I. "Britain was bursting<br>then with confidence in an easy and early victory,"<br>wrote British officer T.E. Lawrence, better known as<br>Lawrence of Arabia, who organized the historic Arab<br>Revolt against the Ottomans. Instead, it took four years<br>for Britain, with vastly superior arms, to conquer all<br>of Iraq.<br><br>Capturing Baghdad after the first three years, they<br>offered almost the same salutation as Napoleon had in<br>Cairo. "Our armies do not come into your cities and<br>lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators,"<br>trumpeted Gen. F.S. Maude, commander of the British<br>forces in Iraq. "Your wealth has been stripped of you by<br>unjust men . ... The people of Baghdad shall flourish<br>under institutions which are in consonance with their<br>sacred laws . ... The Arab race may rise once more to<br>greatness!"<br><br>But Britain retained the Ottomans' long reliance on<br>Sunni Muslims as the governing class in Iraq, an<br>arrangement that exacerbated conflicts with Iraq's<br>larger Kurdish and Shia Muslim populations. It didn't<br>help when the British lobbed artillery shells on the<br>Shia holy city of Najaf, a main source of anticolonial<br>resistance. British troops killed 6,000 to 10,000 Iraqis<br>in putting down a joint revolt by Shia and Sunni Muslims<br>in 1920.<br><br>To suppress later rebellions by Iraq's Kurds, the<br>British invented the technique of strafing civilian<br>rebels from the air. As for Gen. Maude, he succumbed to<br>cholera eight months after he reached Baghdad.<br><br>Imported Monarch<br><br>In 1921, to establish a semblance of local rule, the<br>British brought a leader of the Arab Revolt out of exile<br>in London and anointed him king of Iraq. King Faisal was<br>the scion of a ruling family based some 2,000 miles from<br>Baghdad in Mecca, on the Arabian peninsula. He had<br>already been installed as king of Syria in 1918 and then<br>deposed by the French.<br><br>He did better in Iraq, under the tutelage of an<br>indefatigable British diplomat named Gertrude Bell.<br>Describing Iraq as "an inchoate mass of tribes," Miss<br>Bell traversed the sweltering hinterlands meeting the<br>leaders of every tribe. "She took Faisal by the hand<br>from great sheiks to rabbis to every nobleman: 'Here he<br>is, listen to him, we need your support,' " says Janet<br>Wallach, who published a biography of Miss Bell in 1996.<br><br>Years later, Mr. Hussein would make Iraq's tribes a<br>bulwark of his own regime. To this day, when Saddam<br>greets military commanders on television, he cites their<br>tribal affiliations and sends greetings to their tribal<br>chief. "We don't have anybody to do that, who has the<br>ear of so many people," Ms. Wallach says.<br><br>Despite Britain's setbacks during its 40-year domination<br>of Iraq, which lasted for a quarter-century after Iraq's<br>independence in 1932, it was arguably more successful<br>than any of the other Western invasions of the region.<br>Some Iraqis still recall the time as a golden age of<br>order, education and development. But the British and<br>their chosen kings could never win over their subjects,<br>and deliberately frustrated the Iraqis' desires for an<br>independent political culture.<br><br>In a 17-point memo for fellow British officers, Lawrence<br>of Arabia warned: "The foreigner and Christian is not a<br>popular person in Arabia. However friendly and informal<br>the treatment of yourself may be, remember always that<br>your foundations are very sandy ones."<br><br>When King Faisal's son, Faisal II, was overthrown in<br>1958 by Iraqi Gen. Abdel Karim Kassem, the king and his<br>family were torn limb from limb by a Baghdad mob. Since<br>then, apart from a mid-1970s spurt of economic growth<br>fueled by the oil boom, Iraq's political history has<br>been one of coups, purges, wars and tyranny.<br><br>Suez Crisis<br><br>As Britain's long run in Iraq was nearing an end, the<br>U.K. created new problems in the Middle East. After<br>Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal<br>in 1956, the British, French and Israelis invaded the<br>canal zone. The trio of countries were forced to<br>acquiesce in Egypt's nationalization after a diplomatic<br>standoff with the U.S. and other nations. At home, anger<br>at the mishandled invasion cost Prime Minister Anthony<br>Eden his job. In the Mideast, it fostered perceptions of<br>a Western-Israeli effort to dominate the region, helping<br>to radicalize Arab nationalists.<br><br>"Something about the Middle East leads people to<br>miscalculate," says Robert Parker, a retired U.S.<br>diplomat who helped resolve the Suez crisis.<br><br>Israel, too, overplayed its hand in a Mideast nation, in<br>its surge into Lebanon in 1982 to crush Palestinian<br>guerrillas. Though a Mideast country itself, with many<br>Jewish immigrants from Islamic countries, Israel is seen<br>by many Arabs as a Western implant in the region. Its<br>march to Beirut typified the problems outsiders face<br>when conquering Arab lands, say some Israeli officers<br>who were involved.<br><br>Shia villagers in Lebanon at first welcomed Israeli<br>troops as liberators from Palestinian fighters who had<br>made the border region a war zone, recalls Israeli Brig.<br>Gen. Amatzia Chen. But as Ariel Sharon, then Israel's<br>defense minister, pushed his forces to the outskirts of<br>Beirut, where they killed thousands of civilians, the<br>offensive stalled amid furious criticism in Europe, the<br>U.S. and Israel itself. The once- grateful Shiites<br>turned against the Israelis as occupiers, and efforts to<br>impose a peace agreement on Lebanon through Israel's<br>Maronite Christian allies blew up in a fury of bombings<br>and killings.<br><br>"The idea that you can change the Middle East with guns<br>and bayonets is wrong," says Bob Dillon, U.S. ambassador<br>to Beirut at the time.<br><br>Some in Israel worry U.S. leaders may harbor the same<br>illusions in Iraq that Israel brought with it to<br>Lebanon. If the Americans conquer Baghdad, says reserve<br>Col. Meir Pial, author of a dozen military histories,<br>"they'll have to sponsor a new government. It will be<br>seen by the people as a government cooperating with the<br>conqueror, so it will need support." He predicts that<br>"the longer the Americans stay, the deeper they will<br>find themselves in the mud."<br><br>Bush administration officials acknowledge the minefield<br>they're facing but express confidence the U.S., with its<br>record of democratizing defeated tyrannies in Germany<br>and Japan, can succeed in Iraq. In particular, the<br>administration believes it will avoid past pitfalls by<br>mounting a devastating military strike and following it<br>quickly with billions of dollars in reconstruction and<br>humanitarian aid, according to a Bush official. U.S.<br>officials are also optimistic that Iraq, with its deep-<br>rooted educational and civil-service systems, its<br>history of secularism, its utter exhaustion after three<br>decades of totalitarianism -- and its oil wealth -- is<br>exceptionally ready to leapfrog forward.<br><br>"Iraq's a sophisticated society," Mr. Bush said on March<br>6. "Iraq's got money ... . Iraq will serve as a catalyst<br>for change, positive change."<br><br>U.S. officials have been busy for months organizing<br>committees of exiled Iraqis on every aspect of political<br>and economic reconstruction, even reaching out to Iraqi<br>Shiite groups based in Iran. The U.S. realizes, says<br>William Burns, assistant secretary of state for Mideast<br>affairs, that "the day after the shooting stops, life<br>must get better for Iraqis."<br><br>A longtime student of Mideast history, Mr. Burns<br>realizes something else. "I have always thought that a<br>certain amount of humility is important in applying<br>American power in the Middle East," he told a public<br>forum in San Francisco last month. "Iraq is a very<br>complicated society. This is going to require an<br>enormous amount of support, not just from us but from<br>others in the world. This is not a challenge the U.S.<br>can take on itself."<br><br>Write to Hugh Pope at hugh.popewsj.com and Peter Waldman at <br>peter.waldmanwsj.com<br><http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB104802384328857700,00.html><br><br><br>SEE ALSO:<br><br>http://online.wsj.com/article_email/0,,SB104802384328857700-IFheoZhnaF7xJupZYGpeqaAdZ,00.html <b off></b>
</body>
]]>