They Didn’t Read That Book Either
The University of Chicago Press has a hot book on its hands, with some solid advice for U.S. military in Iraq:
Make friends with the Iraqis. Stay out of political and religious arguments. Try speaking in Arabic — even if you’re not good at it.
“American success or failure in Iraq may well depend on whether the Iraqis … like American soldiers or not,” the book admonishes.
The advice, which sounds like it could be lifted from a lesson book from the war on terror, was actually written 65 years ago during World War II and recently discovered by the U. of C. Press. It’s called “Instructions for American Servicemen in Iraq During World War II.”
(emphasis mine)
[source]
Lets see……
Instruction #1: “Make friends with the Iraqis”: Killing, maiming, crippling, and turning vast numbers of innocent Iraqis into orphans and widows is not friendly – strike one.
Instruction #2: “Stay out of political and religious arguments”: Arming one Iraqi militia against another Iraqi militia when one group is Sunni and the other is Shi’ite is not staying out of either political or religious arguments – strikes two and three.
– and as for the good advice of, “American success or failure in Iraq may well depend on whether the Iraqis … like American soldiers or not,”
Well, that, plus some phenomenally poor planning and arrogance is exactly why they failed.
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I understand that T.H Lawernce’s “Seven Pillars of Wisdom” was also available from the local public library. Of course, if they didn’t check it out before Viet Nam, like Ho Chi Minh did, I guess it would be asking too much to do it in Iraq.
Learning from history is for chumps.
Oh, YEAH? Well, what about…NEVILLE CHAMBERLAIN? EH?
(Actually, the connection between a defeated, secular, near-bankrupt dictator under international surveillance, with overflights by the most powerful military nations in the world, minimal military capacity and Hitler always escaped me. But THEY seem to think there’s some connection.)