Plus ca change, plus cest la meme chose
Jun. 8th, 2003 03:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
favorovSOWING THE WIND
By John Keay
John Murray, GBP 25, pp.448, ISBN:0719555883
"The striking thing about Keays book is that embarrassingly little has changed, and debates from 70 or 80 years ago seem equally pertinent now. In the case of Iraq, Gertrude Bells row in 1919 with Wilson over self-determination could hardly be more to the point. To Bells argument that indigenous government by the Iraqis was now necessary, Wilson objected that the disparate nature of the nation, and particularly the disaffection of the Kurds around Mosul and the tribal Arabs would lead to disaster. Over the incorporation of Mosul in Iraq an extremely pertinent argument, in modern terms, can be heard unfolding. It was not at all clear that it was a part of the Mesopotamia which the Great War Armistice had awarded the Allies, but Britain was determined to have it included in Iraq because of the oil there, the importance of which was only just becoming clear.
As in the recently concluded Iraq war, no one would admit this eminently sensible motive. The idea that HMG would have gone through all the difficulties they have gone through, faced all the expenses and burdened themselves with all the military risks and exactions in order to secure some advantage in regard to some oil-fields is too absurd for acceptance, Churchill said. Curzon followed the line: Oil had not the remotest connection with my attitude, nor with that of His Majestys Government, over Mosul. The exact amount of influence exerted by the oil production there was nil. Listening to politicians at the moment trying desperately to conjure up a non-oil-related motive for the war, one can only say, Plus ca change, plus cest la meme chose. That, really, is the single lesson of this witty, thoroughly informed and agreeably detached account of a subject both serious and extremely interesting"
By John Keay
John Murray, GBP 25, pp.448, ISBN:0719555883
"The striking thing about Keays book is that embarrassingly little has changed, and debates from 70 or 80 years ago seem equally pertinent now. In the case of Iraq, Gertrude Bells row in 1919 with Wilson over self-determination could hardly be more to the point. To Bells argument that indigenous government by the Iraqis was now necessary, Wilson objected that the disparate nature of the nation, and particularly the disaffection of the Kurds around Mosul and the tribal Arabs would lead to disaster. Over the incorporation of Mosul in Iraq an extremely pertinent argument, in modern terms, can be heard unfolding. It was not at all clear that it was a part of the Mesopotamia which the Great War Armistice had awarded the Allies, but Britain was determined to have it included in Iraq because of the oil there, the importance of which was only just becoming clear.
As in the recently concluded Iraq war, no one would admit this eminently sensible motive. The idea that HMG would have gone through all the difficulties they have gone through, faced all the expenses and burdened themselves with all the military risks and exactions in order to secure some advantage in regard to some oil-fields is too absurd for acceptance, Churchill said. Curzon followed the line: Oil had not the remotest connection with my attitude, nor with that of His Majestys Government, over Mosul. The exact amount of influence exerted by the oil production there was nil. Listening to politicians at the moment trying desperately to conjure up a non-oil-related motive for the war, one can only say, Plus ca change, plus cest la meme chose. That, really, is the single lesson of this witty, thoroughly informed and agreeably detached account of a subject both serious and extremely interesting"
