| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"maff" |
| Date: |
11 Apr 2004 02:53:56 PM |
| Object: |
OT: Our Last Real Chance |
Our Last Real Chance
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4711931/
The way forward: The administration has to admit its mistakes and try
to repair the damage. Here's how
By Fareed Zakaria
Newsweek
April 19 issue - In early June 1920, Gertrude Bell, the extraordinary
woman who helped run Iraq for Britain, wrote a letter to her father on
some "violent agitation" against British rule: "[The extremists] have
adopted a line difficult in itself to combat, the union of the Shi'ah
and Sunni, the unity of Islam. And they are running it for all it's
worth ... There's a lot of semi-religious semi-political preaching ...
and the underlying thought is out with the infidel. My belief is that
the weightier people are against it—I know some of them are bitterly
disgusted—but it's very difficult to stand out against the Islamic cry
and the longer it goes on the more difficult it gets." In fact, the
"agitation" quickly turned into a mass (mostly Shia) revolt. British
forces were able to crush it over three long months, but only after
killing almost 10,000 Iraqis, suffering about 500 deaths themselves
and spending the then exorbitant sum of 50 million pounds. After the
1920 revolt, the British fundamentally reoriented their strategy in
Iraq. They abandoned plans for ambitious nation-building and instead
sought a way to transfer power quickly to trustworthy elites.
Fareed Zakaria
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&selm=18510aff.0311220342.2b20f7f%40posting.google.com
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