HISTORY IS REPEATING ITSELF IN IRAQ

Two Caliphates in Baghdad: U.S. Paying High Cost for Ignoring History's Lessons

By Ben Tanosborn, Middle East OnlinePosted on June 24, 2008, Printed on June 24, 2008

http://www.alternet.org/story/89142/

The Brits made an imperial mess of Iraq back in 1930, now it is America's turn!

We followed the fate of the French in Vietnam; are trying hard to imitate the Russians in Afghanistan; and now, our emulation-in-progress is of our beloved European cousins.

Who would ever think that it was an American philosopher (by way of Spain), George Santayana, who stated just a century ago, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." And American government leaders always seem to be the forgetful ones, although as it happens in all these cases, it is the American people who are condemned to pay the consequences in both blood and dollars.

We are not even speaking of millennia ago, or even centuries; only the recent past. How can we be so forgetful as to how the British bamboozled a timid Iraqi Parliament, where the true nationalists lacked a voiced, into signing an agreement in 1930 that would have Iraq in turmoil with coup after coup until Saddam Hussein came to power in 1979? And we all know what has happened since then. Seventy-eight years later here we are, cramming down their throats an illegal "strategic alliance" that is similar in both content and tone to that Great Britain "imposed" on Iraq almost eight decades ago.

And I say illegal for both Iraq and the United States. For Iraq, it's a non-valid agreement since it will be contracted under duress from an occupier's demands, whatever excuses are brought forward to obtain legitimacy. For the US, it's also an invalid pact unless it is subsequently ratified by the US Senate. We are told that the wording in this strategic alliance has been crafted so as to "avoid such ratification." Nonsense, if the provisions in such agreement or alliance have the underlying intent of a treaty, it is a treaty; and as a treaty, constitutionally, it must be ratified.

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