It's 1920 all over again
Niall Ferguson offers an historical perspective on the recent difficulties in Iraq. It seems that the British had some difficulties when they occupied the region in the wake fo the Great War. A while back, Military History Quarterly (I believe) had a fascinating article on the campaign that led to the British occupation of Baghdad, but I was unaware of the level of casualties that the British sustained after that.
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B,
B,
I dig N Ferguson, but I'm not sure what his point is with this article.
The way I take it, Ferguson argues that truth, or at least responsible foreign policy, can only come from university faculties or *shudder* students.
His perception of American academia is awfully rosy, while he is a bit heavy-handed with what he called "senior military leaders", being ignorant of history or historical events. Ferguson doesn't spend alot of time in military circles, apparently, where historical study is just this side of mandatory.
And is he also arguing that because the British lost x-thousand soldiers in 1920, it stands to reason that the US will lose that many in 2004? I would hope not, since a guy who laments American historical ignorance and lessons learned couldn't possibly use a single 84 year old precedent to derive a formulation for contemporary success.
I don't quite know what his
I don't quite know what his point was either, but nevertheless, the information about the British experience was useful.