Posted 3:01 AM by Paul
LESSONS OF HISTORY


Carol - another American enraged by what the US Government is doing in her name - sent me this report by Lawrence of Arabia

A Report on Mesopotamia by T.E. Lawrence published by The Sunday Times 1919

Mr. Lawrence, whose organization and direction of the
Hedjaz against the Turks was one of the outstanding
romances of the war, has written this article at our
request in order that the public may be fully informed of
our Mesopotamian commitments.

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. The sins of
commission are those of the British civil authorities in
Mesopotamia (especially of three 'colonels')who were given
a free hand by London. They are controlled from not from
the Department of State, but from the empty space which
divides the Foreign Office from the India Office. They
availed themselves of the necessary discretion of war-time
to carry over their dangerous independence into times of
peace. They contest every suggestion of real self-
government sent them from home. A recent proclamation about
autonomy circulated with unction from Baghdad was drafted
and published out there in a hurry, to forestall a more
liberal statement in preparation in London,
'Self-determination papers' favourable to England were
extorted in Mesopotamia in 1919 by official pressure, by
aeroplane demonstrations, by deportations to India.

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. When conditions
became too bad to endure longer, they decided to send out
as High commissioner the original author of the present
system, with a conciliatory message to the Arabs that his
heart and policy have completely changed.*

Yet our published policy has not changed, and does not need
changing. It is that there has been a deplorable contrast
between our profession and our practice. We said we went to
Mesopotamia to defeat Turkey. We said we stayed to deliver
the Arabs from the oppression of the Turkish Government,
and to make available for the world its resources of corn
and oil. We spent nearly a million men and nearly a
thousand million of money to these ends. This year we are
spending ninety-two thousand men and fifty millions of
money on the same objects.

Our government is worse than the old Turkish system. They
kept fourteen thousand local conscripts embodied, and
killed a yearly average of two hundred Arabs in maintaining
peace. We keep ninety thousand men, with aeroplanes,
armoured cars, gunboats, and armoured trains. We have
killed about ten thousand Arabs in this rising this summer.
We cannot hope to maintain such an average: it is a poor
country, sparsely peopled; but Abd el Hamid would applaud
his masters, if he saw us working. We are told the object
of the rising was political, we are not told what the local
people want. It may be what the Cabinet has promised them.
A Minister in the House of Lords said that we must have so
many troops because the local people will not enlist. On
Friday the Government announce the death of some local
levies defending their British officers, and say that the
services of these men have not yet been sufficiently
recognized because they are too few (adding the
characteristic Baghdad touch that they are men of bad
character). There are seven thousand of them, just half the
old Turkish force of occupation. Properly officered and
distributed, they would relieve half our army there. Cromer
controlled Egypt's six million people with five thousand
British troops; Colonel Wilson fails to control
Mesopotamia's three million people with ninety thousand
troops.

We have not reached the limit of our military commitments.
Four weeks ago the staff in Mesopotamia drew up a
memorandum asking for four more divisions. I believe it was
forwarded to the War Office, which has now sent three
brigades from India. If the North-West Frontier cannot be
further denuded, where is the balance to come from?
Meanwhile, our unfortunate troops, Indian and British,
under hard conditions of climate and supply, are policing
an immense area, paying dearly every day in lives for the
wilfully wrong policy of the civil administration in
Baghdad. General Dyer was relieved of his command in India
for a much smaller error, but the responsibility in this
case is not on the Army, which has acted only at the
request of the civil authorities. The War Office has made
every effort to reduce our forces, but the decisions of the
Cabinet have been against them.

The Government in Baghdad have been hanging Arabs in that
town for political offences, which they call rebellion. The
Arabs are not at war with us. Are these illegal executions
to provoke the Arabs to reprisals on the three hundred
British prisoners they hold? And, if so, is it that their
punishment may be more severe, or is it to persuade our
other troops to fight to the last?

We say we are in Mesopotamia to develop it for the benefit
of the world. All experts say that the labour supply is the
ruling factor in its development. How far will the killing
of ten thousand villagers and townspeople this summer
hinder the production of wheat, cotton, and oil? 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?