An Essay on the Colonizing of Iraq -- La Plus Ca Change

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

(I know this has been posted here in the past, just reading it again last night made me shake my head. From the original "Lawrence of Arabia".)

22 August, 1920
A Report on Mesopotamia by T.E. Lawrence

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Ex.-Lieut.-Col. T.E. Lawrence,
The Sunday Times, 22 August 1920
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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.

(snip)

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.

(snip)

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?

http://www.lib.byu.edu/~rdh/wwi/1918p/mesopo.html

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

1. Le Kick