Saddam Hussein, Wikimedia Commons
Mark Perry, American Conservative: How Saddam Hussein Predicted America’s Failure in Iraq
One of his top generals provides a window into the former dictator's mind.
In early 1917, during World War I, British general Sir Frederick Stanley Maude led an army of sixty thousand British and Indian soldiers from Basra up the Tigris and Euphrates rivers to Baghdad. His enemy was a Turkish army, some twenty-five-thousand strong, defending a province of what was then a part of the decrepit Ottoman Empire. Maude was hardly a creative campaigner (his troops called him “systematic Joe”), but then his conquest of Mesopotamia wasn’t much of a fight. “The Turkish Army that was recently before us,” he reported to his superiors, “has ceased to exist as a fighting force owing to its casualties, prisoners, demoralization and the loss of a large proportion of its artillery and stores.” Maude led his army into Baghdad on a prancing horse on March 11 and then, in the finest British tradition, issued a proclamation: “We come as liberators, not occupiers,” it said. The Iraqis thought otherwise.
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Commentaries, Analysis, And Editorials -- October 31, 2017
America Never Understood Iraq -- Robert Ford, The Atlantic
The unseen costs of dethroning 'rocket man' -- Max Brooks, The Hill
“Everyone will become rich”: in China, the newly wealthy live in contrast with the old rural poor -- Nick Holdstock, Prospect Magazine
China's Vision of Global Leadership Takes Shape -- Jack Goldstone, RealClearWorld
Inside view of Myanmar’s Rohingya insurgency -- Carlos Sardiña Galache, Asia Times
Lithuania, Leery of Moscow, Spars With Belarus over nuclear reactor -- Reid Standish, Foreign Policy
It Seems Inconceivable That We’re Still Fighting In Afghanistan…And Yet Here We Are -- Jason Dempsey, Task & Purpose
The Catalan crisis: Is the contemporary nation-state in jeopardy? -- Patrick Lawrence, Salon
What Europe can do for the Western Balkans -- Vessela Tcherneva, ECFR
With new Wall of Grief, Russia grapples with Soviet crimes -- Julia Chapman, DW
In the new Cold War, Putin is employing Lenin’s counsel -- Kristofer Harrison, The Hill
Russia again casts a long shadow over Cuba -- Andreas Knobloch, DW
The War on Drugs: The Narco States of North America -- Earl Anthony Wayne, National Interest
OPEC who? US oil producers are moving into the Asian market -- Sri Jegarajah, CNBC
Is It Ever Really Appropriate to Use Nuclear Weapons? -- Rod Lyon, National Interest
