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Originally Posted by Seaver
For being a person who decides who is out of touch, learn your history. Gertrude Bell did not choose King Faisal, the British Government gave him the kingdom because the Saudi Family established too much control over the Arabian Peninsula. Faisal, who lead the Arab revolt against the Ottoman Turks with the support of the British through Lawrence (of Arabia), was promised the Kingship over the Arabs. After the Arab provinces were divided up, the British government could either give him Arabia, or Iraq (as Muhammad Ali's successor Fuad held rights over Egypt). The Saudi house and Faisal hated each other, and the Saudi control over Mecca and Medina assured he could not rule Arabia. THAT is why Faisal was chosen to rule Iraq.
And the bring-back-Saddam speech is foolhearty. The same people who declare that Saddam was good because he kept everyone from fighting are the same people who would be up in arms if the new government asserted itself against the various militias.
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Seaver, I stand by my comments and I already posted supporting information, with links.....I'll condense it below. Feel free to back up your challenging statements....and I think that it is possible that we are both correct !
As far as the notion of "bringing back Saddam" is concerned.....it is telling that it even appears in print in a major US newspaper. Saddam was the way Saddam was, because Iraq was the way Iraq was. In the absence of his authority and repression, there is only chaos and high odds that southern Iraq will be permanently united with Iran, that Turkey will respond to Kurdish autonomy with armed force, and formerly dominant but now repressed sunni Iraqis will fight to the death to thwart the new shi'a dominance. In hindsight, putting up with a weakened Saddam, neutered by the coalition "no fly zone" was a small price to pay, since it prevented what is described above, and checked Iranian ambitions in the region.
Only a repressive and dominant sunni rule in Iraq will control Iraqi shi'a and Iranian ambitions, and placate Turkish concerns. No options, including a restoration of Saddam's government, backed by strong US support, and if neccessary, armed force, can responsibly be taken "off the table", in present circumstances. Unless you have some other proposals that will check Iranian hegemony, discourage sunni insurgents, wind down the influence of shi'a militia in the interior ministry and in cities and towns, and avoid the partition of Iraq and a Turkish reaction? If not.....our troops stay put, at or near present numbers.....
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...401355_pf.html
....Bell, a singular, gentle-born woman who had already established a name through Arab travels and scholarly writings rivaling those of any man of her time, arrived soon after. She stayed on for the rest of her life, as Oriental secretary to British governments, carving out and creating modern-day Iraq as much as any single person.
Bell sketched the boundaries of Iraq on tracing paper after careful consultation with Iraqi tribes, consideration of Britain's need for oil and her own idiosyncratic geopolitical beliefs......
.....She and her allies gave the monarchy to the minority Sunnis, denied independence to the Kurds in order to keep northern oil fields for Britain and withheld from the Shiite majority the democracy of which she thought them incapable.
"The object of every government here has always been to keep the Shi'ah divines from taking charge of public affairs," Bell wrote......
.......Bell's camp ensured that Britain and its military would have say over Iraq's government and oil for decades to come. London installed a foreign Sunni sheik, Faisal, as Iraq's king in a rigged plebiscite with a Hussein-style, 96 percent yes vote....
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Quote:
http://www.unc.edu/depts/diplomat/it...urst_bell.html
Though she is remembered today mainly by Middle East scholars and travel writers, there has recently been a modest revival of interest in Gertrude Bell (1868-1926) because of the key role she played in the creation of modern Iraq in the early 1920s. <h3>She was involved not only in putting King Faisal, son of the Hashemite Sharif of Mecca, on the throne in Baghdad, but helped draw the new country’s borders and mobilized its tribes and religious groups to support the new nation-state.......</h3>
.....In the early 1920s, after the British-held plebiscite and a general agreement among the leaders of the various factions in what was then known as Mesopotamia to unite and become a nation, a friend of Bell's, a tribal sheik, said that all the pillars were standing for the formation of a new state and now what they needed was a roof. <b>Shortly after that, Faisal, the protege of Bell and T. E. Lawrence (better known as Lawrence of Arabia), was imported from Mecca to become the "roof."......</b>
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From Bell's letter of Aug. 16, 1920....to her father (2nd paragraph from bottom....)
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http://www.gerty.ncl.ac.uk/letters/l1367.htm
....I've a warm invitation from Blanche but of course I can't go. The Lord knows what's going to happen here - the best suggestion I can make is that now Faisal is in England Sir Percy should crown him King of Mesopotamia in Westminster Abbey (if it hasn't tumbled down) and then come back hand in hand with him. And upon my soul it wouldn't seem any more improbable than all the rest of the things that are happening. I don't see S. Talib as King however .....
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