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Suez II - Lessons never learned from invasion of Egypt 50 years ago

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Suez II
Lessons never learned from invasion of Egypt 50 years ago
Wed Oct 25 2006 GWYNNE DYER
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/westview/story/3744549p-4329334c.html

IF you're an imperial power, your troops often end up in places that most of your citizens cannot even find on the map: Mesopotamia for Roman soldiers, for example, or Afghanistan (three times) for the British. It looks foolish, viewed with the long perspective of history, and yet lots of people fall for it in the short run.

This week marks the 50th anniversary of the Suez crisis of 1956, when Britain, France and Israel conspired to invade Egypt. That operation took much less time to fall apart than the current Anglo-American invasion of Iraq, which has already lasted more than three years, but the parallels are irresistible.

(It also marks the 50th anniversary of Canadian prime minister Lester Pearson's successful effort to end the conflict with the use of peacekeepers).

The British-French-Israeli invasion of Egypt was an instant military success, because at that point Egypt had just emerged from centuries of colonial rule by the Turks and the British. Egypt was utterly incapable of defending itself against countries that had long-range bombers, aircraft carriers and amphibious forces. But what was striking, even then, was the sheer helplessness of the Anglo-French invasion forces once they had won their military victory.

It was one of those "wars of choice" that great powers in decline sometimes fight just to show that they are still top dog. Britain and France had both suffered a sudden, severe demotion in their great-power status after the Second World War, as it became clear that the principal players in the next round of the game were the United States and the Soviet Union, countries of continental scale with which they could not hope to compete. So the declining powers had chosen a war against Egypt as a way of demonstrating that they were still serious players.

It is unlikely that anybody in power in London or in Paris ever put it quite that way at the time. Even in the innermost circles of power, things are rarely called by their proper names, and the lies are layered. Thus the British and French secretly agreed with the Israelis that the latter should invade Egypt, whereupon Britain and France would "intervene" to separate the Israeli and Egyptian combatants and "protect" the Suez Canal.

Behind that was a story about how Egypt's nationalization of the Suez Canal was threatening world trade (though Egyptians were running the canal perfectly well), and another story about how the shareholders in the Anglo-French company that had previously run the canal were being victimized (partly true, but hardly a cause for war). And behind all that was the real reason: the existential angst that British and French power in the region was in precipitous decline, and needed a successful war to shore it up.

Fast-forward 50 years to Iraq, and the script has hardly changed. The great power facing demotion now is the United States (as new great powers emerge in Asia), and the target is another Arab country: Iraq. The rhetoric that justifies the invasion follows an American rather than a European model, so there is more emphasis on apocalyptic threats (Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction that he will give to terrorists) and on moral considerations (he tortures and kills people) than in the Suez episode. But behind all that the motive is the same: The need to shore up American power in the Middle East by a successful war against a defiant local ruler.

American power wasn't actually in rapid decline in the Middle East in 2003, any more than British and French power was in 1956. It was in slow decline, just as British and French power had been in the 1950s. In 1956 the revolt against France in Algeria had barely begun, and Britain still effectively controlled Jordan, Iraq and the Gulf states. The Suez invasion was an unprovoked attack intended to destroy Gamal Abdul Nasser, the charismatic Egyptian leader whom the British and French feared would rally the Arabs against their domination of the region -- and it ended by destroying their domination of the region.

The analogy with the current American invasion of Iraq is striking. The United States government offered the same blizzard of lies to justify its invasion of Iraq, and its fundamental goal was identical: to shore up a slowly deteriorating domination of the region by a striking military success. It was another "war of choice" -- in journalist Tom Friedman's famous phrase -- and it is coming to the same grim conclusion.

It is taking much longer to reach that conclusion because America, the sole superpower, has nobody else to tell it to stop. U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower did that service for the British and French in 1956, telling them to stop the nonsense at once, and they obeyed. If they had been allowed to continue, as Michael Foot (later a contender for the leadership of the Labour Party in Britain) and Mervyn Jones noted in a book published in 1957, Britain and France would have faced guerrilla war in Egypt, and in the end "we would have had to get out again, expelled by the gun of the terrorist."

There was nobody who could tell the U.S. government to stop when the Bush administration decided to invade Iraq, and so American troops in Iraq are living through (or dying in) the same sort of guerrilla war that Eisenhower spared the British and French in Egypt 50 years ago by ordering them to stop and go home.

There must be a moral here somewhere, but I'm damned if I know what it is.


Gwynne Dyer is a London-based

independent journalist.
End
 
Gwynne Dyer brings up a lot of good points but I find him like Churchill - a very good story if you read nothing else.

Here's 2 books for you - one better than the other

Fawaz Gerges - The Far Enemy - Why Jihad went Global http://www.amazon.com/Far-Enemy-Cambridge-Middle-Studies/dp/0521791405/sr=8-2/qid=1162060137/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2/102-5772237-5014528?ie=UTF8&s=books

and

Marc Sageman Understanding Terror Networks - http://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Terror-Networks-Marc-Sageman/dp/0812238087/sr=1-1/qid=1162060210/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-5772237-5014528?ie=UTF8&s=books

I`m reading them both for a course and am half through each.

What they show is that the mid East Governments haven't built economies like the west  - they are narrow - lots of oil eg but not lots of benefits - dependant on Great POwer aid and when this declines their ability to deliver what services they do deliver - declines

People need jobs jobs jobs and when the economics don't reach the bottom - then we get the Syriana Effect - some dolt egging on the young guys with absolutely nothing to lose.

Have a look at both books then compare that to Gwynne Dyer's work.

Its easy to critique - but  anyone should fairly ask -- ok problems yes - but what's your proposition to fix them?
 
54/102 CEF said:
People need jobs jobs jobs and when the economics don't reach the bottom - then we get the Syriana Effect - some dolt egging on the young guys with absolutely nothing to lose...Its easy to critique - but  anyone should fairly ask -- ok problems yes - but what's your proposition to fix them?
the biggest problem to fixing the job situation is the attitude towards work so prevalent in most of the Middle East.
They're agin' it.
When working an oil site out there, you can't get locals to do the work, since they maintain the old Nomad attitude that such things are beneath them. When you do get locals, you can't be sure that they will return the next day, or even finish the tasks they were given that day.
Until that attitude changes, nothing else, job-wise, will. And since the various gov'ts of the day choose to exploit dissatisfaction, rather than improve the average local's lot in life, that ain't likely to happen. It's far easier to simply blame everything on - Israel, the West, Israel, other religions, Israel, other political processes, Israel, and of course Jews in general.
Distract the populace, while raping the populace.
 
paracowboy said:
the biggest problem to fixing the job situation is the attitude towards work so prevalent in most of the Middle East.
They're agin' it.
..............
Distract the populace, while raping the populace.

Very Good post

I have some stuff on Arab Competitive Advantage from the DAVOS World Forum - I`ll make a note to post it shortly --- its Arab business men critiquing their areas - some amazing conclusions

Among them

Internet penetration parallels economic expansion
Lebanon doesn`t exist as a government entity
Lack of Education drives down the ability to work to the rock bottom
The dead hand of the government means nothing gets done that has a positive economic spinoff
Investors are flocking to the United Arab Emirates

More to follow....
 
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