Posted on 03/14/2003 3:53:22 PM PST by SJackson
WHO "INVENTED" IRAQ AND THE MODERN MIDDLE EAST?
I am not going to keep you in suspense! There was an article in yesterday's Jerusalem Post, March 11, 2003--reprinted from the Wall Street Journal--entitled, My Grandfather Invented Iraq. The author of this article is Winston S. Churchill, grandson of Winston Churchill. This grandson, a former British member of Parliament, informs us with seemingly great pride: "Meanwhile, I have a confession to make: It was my grandfather, Winston Churchill, who "invented" Iraq and laid the foundation for much of the modern Middle East. In 1921, as British colonial secretary, Churchill was responsible for creating Jordan and Iraq and for placing the Hashemite rulers, Abdullah and Feisal, on their respective thrones in Amman and Baghdad. Furthermore, he delineated for the first time the political boundaries of Biblical Palestine."
There you have it: the G-d of our Bible initially delineated the boundaries of the Holy Land, and the British Colonial Secretary, Winston Churchill, with one stroke of his pen changed the edicts of the Almighty.
In the words of Winston Churchill's grandson, his grandfather "for the first time delineated the political boundaries of Biblical Palestine."
A short review of history is in order at this point.
Israel became a nation in 1312 B.C.E., i.e. 2,000 years BEFORE the rise of Islam, and long before there was any Arab nation. Israel has been the homeland of the Jewish people since biblical times. It was subsequently "occupied" more than 15 times. Among its occupiers were the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, and the Ottoman Turks. The longest occupiers of the Holy Land who ruled on and off for 400 years--between 1517 and 1917--were the Ottoman Turks. They were followed by the British who ruled under a Mandate of the League of Nations (later the U.N.) to renew a homeland for the Jewish People.
Britain violated its Mandate of the League of Nations, and the Mandate of its own Balfour Declaration by carving out 70% of what was supposed to be the Jewish homeland and giving it to Abdullah, one of the Hashemite tribal rulers, thereby "inventing" Jordan, which was at first called Transjordan. Note the name "Transjordan", which means "across the Jordan". Even in their generosity, the British did not give Abdullah the biblical Judea and Samaria. Churchill also "invented" Iraq and placed a rival Hashemite tribal chief on a throne in Baghdad.
Thus, most of the Arab countries came into being in the aftermath of the First World War and the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire. In every case, Britain and France, the two European colonial powers that had inherited the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire, played the central role in shaping the new states.
These new states were almost invariably shaped as instruments for protecting and/ or furthering some specific strategic interest of the colonial powers concerned.
Iraq, for example, was created around the oil fields of Mosul and Kirkuk. The Egyptian state's task was to help protect the Suez Canal. Lebanon was carved out as a state to safeguard the interests of the Christians of the Orient under French protection. (The French failed miserably.) Transjordan was to be a British military outpost.
The new states were built around an army created by the colonial power largely for policing purposes. With the event of the decolonization movement, the newly created army-based Arab states lost their original function. In order not to lose their power, the Arab military elites decided on a series of coups d'etat. Armies that had been created as instruments of colonial domination, redefined themselves as standard-bearers of Arab nationalism. The excuse they found for their intervention in politics was the Arab defeat at the hands of the newly created Israeli State in 1948. The Arab military promised that once they were in power themselves, they would restore the lost Arab honor.
The series of coups, begun in Syria in 1948, continued with the seizure of power by the army in Egypt (1952), Iraq (1958), Yemen (1960), the Sudan (1962), and Libya (1969). Even newly independent Algeria soon fell under military rule (1965).
In most cases, the military overthrew a traditional type of regime, often in the form of a monarchy backed by tribal structures.
The army's direct assumption of power led to a gradual militarization of Arab politics in which force was regarded as the main source of legitimacy.
The military rulers did what they knew best: wage war. They began by fighting civil society with the aim of destroying within it all potential sources of alternative authority and legitimacy.
They disarmed as many of the tribes as they could, and executed, imprisoned, exiled and bought most of their leaders. Operations that amounted to what we now know as "ethnic cleansing" were conducted against Coptic Christians in Upper Egypt and Jews and Persians in Iraq.
(At one point almost a fifth of Baghdad's population had been Jews. By 1968, however, only a handful had remained, all others having fled to Iran, emigrated to Israel, or been led to their deaths by successive military rulers. In 1972-73 Saddam Hussein conducted the biggest "ethnic cleansing" operation in Iraq's history by expelling over 600,000 Iraqis to Iran on the grounds that they might have had Persian ancestry.)
In some cases, such as the series of anti-Kurd campaigns in Iraq between 1932 and 1988, operations launched by the state reached the level of genocide.
The great danger to the world today is that these Arab Islamic states have spawned a virulent hatred of the Free World and against the Judeo-Christian civilization as a whole.
Playing midwife to all these warring Arab tribes and inventing and creating states for them has been a colossal British mistake. Britain certainly did not consider the long-term consequences of their actions. All of us are now endangered by the hatred of radical Islam directed against the Western world.
President George W. Bush has shown great courage and determination in declaring that Saddam Hussein of Iraq must be disarmed, whether the United Nations Security Council, the European Union, Russia, China and the Arab world agree or not. "All the criticism abroad is not worth the loss of even one American life at home. When it comes to our security, we really don't need anybody's permission." (Ariel Sharon, heed this advice!)
We keep hearing that the United States President George W. Bush "owes" the British leader Tony Blair for joining in the battle against Saddam. On the contrary, Tony Blair "owes" President Bush for trying to clear up the mess which Britain, as a colonial power, created in the Middle East
The real danger is that the whole world, including unfortunately George W. Bush, now seems united as to how to neutralize the Arab terror and to keep it away from their own shores. Their goal, after the war with Iraq, is to appease the Arab world by inventing and creating yet another dysfunctional Arab state.
Here we go again: This time the plan is to carve out even more land promised to the Jews for their homeland.
Joining us in this discussion tonight are Evelyn Gordon, veteran journalist and commentator, and Michael Widlansky, former foreign correspondent for American newspapers and presently lecturer at the Hebrew University.
The time has come for the Arab World to share the huge chunk of the Ottoman Empire they received in the early 20th century--about 1,250,000 square miles--with their Arab-Palestinian brothers and sisters. The time has come for the Arab World to invest their resources in democracy and freedom instead of financing an international "kill-the-infidel" culture. On this there must be no compromise or appeasement. The Arab world has enough land and oil. What the Arab World lacks is the will to live in peace with themselves, in general and non-Muslims in particular.
The Arab World will never relinquish their quest to destroy Israel, even at the cost of impoverishing their people and inculcating them with hatred towards Israel and the United States, and destroying the hopes of a generation of their own children. If a side-by-side, two-state solution to the Arab-Israeli/ Arab-"Palestinian" conflict comes to fruition, it will be short lived and a disaster for all.
(A recording of this entire program, including the interviews, is available on http://www.israelnationalnews.com Click on Radio/On Demand Audio)
Google Search: french military victories ... Your search - french military victories - did not match any documents. Suggestions: - Make sure all words are spelled correctly. - Try different keywords. ... www.internetcetera.com/fmv.html - 11k - Cached - Similar pages
Try BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
or maybe Parker Bro.'s
Until this is proven, and it won't be, there will be strife in the Middle East while those who believe it's already been proven wait for armageddon.
I don't know why anyone even tries...
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