National Army Museum - 11 March 2007 marks the 90th anniversary of the British Army's capture of Baghdad from Turkish forces in 1917. The often overlooked Mesopotamia campaign of World War One (1914-18) therefore has a new resonance for us. Today, British forces are once again engaged in a fierce conflict in Iraq.

On 11 March 1917, British and Indian troops entered Baghdad, the principal city of Turkish-controlled Mesopotamia. It marked the high point of a long and tragic campaign that was characterised by bitter fighting in a harsh climate.

Blood and Oil

Indian Army forces had landed in Mesopotamia in November 1914 to safeguard oil supplies and British interests in the area, quickly capturing the important port of Basra.

Encouraged by this early success, the British advanced gradually up the River Tigris capturing Qurna, Amara, Nasireyeh and Kut-al-Amara, a distance of nearly 400 miles (644 km). By October 1915, they were poised to attack the Turks defending Baghdad itself.

Siege at Kut-al-Amara

The first effort to capture Baghdad and defeat the Turkish Army in Mesopotamia ended in tragic failure. With insufficient forces and badly overstretched, Major-General Charles Townshend’s 6th Indian Division was beaten back at the Battle of Ctesiphon in November 1915 and besieged in the town of Kut-al-Amara.

Attempts to relieve him were a failure and the starving garrison marched into captivity after being paraded through Baghdad at the end of April 1916. Many men died of disease, malnutrition and cruel treatment.

...

Fall of Baghdad

The defeat of the Turks at Shumran and the recapture of Kut-al-Amara opened the way to Baghdad. On the morning of 11 March 1917, a patrol of the Black Watch entered the city, followed by men of the 35th Brigade. Maude issued a proclamation a week after his troops took Baghdad, part of which could be seen as a sobering precursor to 2003’s Operation Iraqi Freedom:

'Our military operations have as their object the defeat of the enemy, and the driving of him from these territories. In order to complete this task, I am charged with absolute and supreme control of all regions in which British troops operate; but our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators'. [emph. mine -ww]

The war in Mesopotamia was still far from over, but the resistance of the Turks was broken. Maude himself did not see final victory. Exhausted from overwork, he contracted cholera and died on 18 November 1917.

Iraq Mandate

After signing an Armistice with the Turks on 8 November 1918, British troops remained in the region and the new state of Iraq became a British mandate. Between 1920 and 1922, the British Army suppressed a major revolt in the country. Iraq became independent in 1932, but British troops occupied the country in 1941 in order to safeguard oil supplies during World War Two (1939-45).

Echoes from the past

In 1918, as the Mesopotamia campaign drew to an end, British soldiers observed problems familiar today. Sergeant Arthur Campbell wrote that the Baghdad population 'could not agree among themselves as to who should be at their head under the Government as the Sunnis insisted on a Sunni Prince…whereas the Shiites demanded that the Ulema of Najaf should be head of the people. Then there was the non-Muslim population to consider'.

Now, as then, the British Army finds itself operating in a country divided on religious grounds, combating insurgents and witnessing extremes of sectarian violence.

British forces enter Baghdad on March 11, 1917, from a report in the Daily Telegraph.

"...cunning, baffling, powerful."

found via Glenn Greenwald: Lessons not learned

Slate: Five years on, "liberal hawks" consider their support for the Iraq war.

OK, but how many more people are there in the world?...

... 310,000,000 worldwide in 1000, and 6,453,628,000 as of 2005. Leaving a difference of 6,143,628,000, or, 20.818 times as many as there were in the 1000AD.

"...cunning, baffling, powerful."

The Conservative Voice
by Pat Buchanan

“Though the object of being a Great Power is to be able to fight a Great War, the only way of remaining a Great Power is not to fight one.” So wrote British historian A.J.P. Taylor in 1961.

All the 20th century empires forgot the lesson and all perished of wounds suffered in Great Wars: the Ottoman, Russian Austro-Hungarian and German empires in World War I, the Japanese in World War II, the French and British the morning after.

Comes now the turn of the Americans. Guided through the Cold War by conservative statesmen like Eisenhower and Reagan, America rejected Churchillian romanticism and, even in the face of horrors like the butchery in Budapest in 1956, refused to risk the Great War. But now a triumphalist America has begun to behave like all the rest.

If Providence does not intrude, we will soon launch an imperial war on Iraq with all the “On-to-Berlin!” bravado with which French poilus and British Tommies marched in August 1914. But this invasion will not be the cakewalk neoconservatives predict. More likely, it will be the “bloody mess” of which Tony Cordesman warns.

Yet America will not be defeated by an Arab pariah state with an obsolete air force, a dozen 400-mile missiles, a population a tenth of ours, an economy 1% of ours, and neither satellites nor smart bombs.

Indeed, all 22 Arab nations have a total GDP smaller than Spain’s. None can defeat us and any that resorts to a weapon of mass destruction invites annihilation. And before any hostile Arab or Islamic regime can acquire an atomic weapon, the War Party wants to exploit this window of opportunity to smash them all.

But what comes after the celebratory gunfire when wicked Saddam is dead? Initially, the President and War Party will be seen as vindicated by victory and exhilarated by their new opportunity. For Iraq is key to the Middle East. With Iraq occupied, Syria will be hemmed in by Israeli, American, and Turkish power. Assad will have to pull his army out of Lebanon, so Sharon can go back in and settle scores with Hezbollah. Iran will be surrounded by U.S. power in Turkey, Iraq, the Gulf, Afghanistan, Central Asia and the Arabian Sea.

This is the vision that intoxicates the neoconservatives who pine for a “World War IV” – a cakewalk conquest of Iraq followed by short sharp wars on Syria and Iran. Already Israel is tugging at our sleeve, reminding us not to forget Libya.

What is wrong with this vision? Only this. Just as Israel’s invasion of Lebanon ignited a guerrilla war that drove her bloodied army out after 18 years, a U.S. army in Baghdad will ignite calls for jihad from Morocco to Malaysia.

Pro-American regimes will be seen as impotent to prevent U.S. hegemony over the Islamic world. And just as monarchs who collaborated with Europe’s colonial powers were dethroned by nationalists in Cairo, Damascus, Baghdad, Tripoli, Teheran and Addis Ababa, pro-American autocrats will be targeted by assassins.

A burst of gunfire could convert Jordan, Afghanistan or nuclear-armed Pakistan into an enemy overnight. And with Israelis generals blabbing about pre-positioned U.S. weapons and Bibi Netanyahu listing for Congressional committees all the Arab nations we must attack, Al Jazeera does not need shoe-leather reporting to let Islam know on whose behalf America has come to crush their armies and occupy their capitals.

Once in Baghdad, how do we get out? If the Kurds rebel to create a nation, will U.S. troops help Turks crush them? If the House of Saud falls, will it be succeeded by social democrats, or Bin Laden’s fanatics?

To destroy Saddam’s weapons, to democratize, defend and hold Iraq together, U.S. troops will be tied down for decades. Yet, terrorist attacks in liberated Iraq seem as certain as in liberated Afghanistan. For a militant Islam that holds in thrall scores of millions of true believers will never accept George Bush dictating the destiny of the Islamic world.

With our MacArthur Regency in Baghdad, Pax Americana will reach apogee. But then the tide recedes, for the one endeavor at which Islamic peoples excel is expelling imperial powers by terror and guerrilla war. They drove the Brits out of Palestine and Aden, the French out of Algeria, the Russians out of Afghanistan, the Americans out of Somalia and Beirut, the Israelis out of Lebanon.

Twelve years ago, this writer predicted that George Bush’s Gulf War would be “the first Arab-American War.” The coming war will not be the last. We have started up the road to empire and over the next hill we will meet those who went before. The only lesson we learn from history is that we do not learn from history.

as to why we went into Iraq is by this March 18 article by Jim Lobe and is worth a careful read in its entirety:

That is not to say that oil was irrelevant to the administration's calculations, but perhaps in a different sense than that meant by the 'No Blood for Oil' slogan. After all, oil is an absolutely indispensable requirement for running modern economies and militaries. And the invasion was a forceful -- indeed, a shock- and awe-some -- demonstration to the rest of the world, especially potential strategic rivals like China, Russia, or even the European Union, of Washington's ability to quickly and effectively conquer and control an oil-rich nation in the heart of the energy-rich Middle East/Gulf region any time it wishes, perhaps persuading those lesser powers that challenging the U.S. could well prove counter-productive to long-term interests, if not their supply of energy in the short term.

Indeed, a demonstration of such power could well be the fastest way to formalise a new international order based on the overwhelming military power of the United States, unequalled at least since the Roman Empire. It would be a 'unipolar world' of the kind envisaged by the 1992 draft Defence Planning Guidance (DPG) commissioned by then-Pentagon chief Dick Cheney, overseen by Wolfowitz and Cheney's future chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby, and contributed to by future ambassador to 'liberated' Afghanistan and Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad and Bush's deputy national security adviser, J.D. Crouch.

A personal story. My wife was being interviewed by BBC Channel 4 TV in something like 2004. When the filming was done, I talked with the producer about the war in Iraq. He told me that in a conversation with Scooter Libby, and I quote from memory, that Scooter told him that 'The US had to invade Iraq because Afghanistan wasn't enough. We had to do something bigger.' Sounds like Lobe has it nailed.

Edit: This really explains lot regarding the Bush admin's legal initiatives regarding the war. From the above account they knew full well they were going into a war that could get them hauled up in front of a Nuremberg-like tribunal. They were consciously committing crimes against peace and starting a war of aggression. They got away with it.