Victory and Peace in Iraq:

The Final Destination by Paul Flum

A torn picture of Saddam Hussein seen at a former military compound in the southern Iraqi town of Umm Qasr.

As a nation, we are now into the fifth year following our invasion of Iraq in March of 2003.

The invasion and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein were the easy parts. Our occupation of this chaotic country now dominates our national dialogue, and devours our energy, attention, and political passions. It is the single most critical issue facing our nation.

How we deal with this crisis from this point forward will influence our own future for years to come — and the future of Iraq forever.

Far from ending after the fall of Saddam Hussein, the war has evolved and metastasized into a multi-headed monster. Because Bush had no plan to protect the cities, the country, and all its treasures (museums, library, etc.) there was violent looting with mob rule while our troops stood idly by.

After marines took Tikrit, American soldiers celebrated as they entered the city.

The landscape and the cities have become battlegrounds involving different insurgency groups, tribal and criminal militias, sectarian death squads, and al-Qaeda sympathizers from all over the State.

Iraq today is a country being torn apart and blown up. It is a country in which the destructive internal forces far outweigh the constructive ones. It is a country in which the forces of division and domination are overwhelming the forces of cooperation and reconciliation.

The Iraqi population is increasingly fracturing along the forces of theocratic division lines – a violent and terrifying process that has created an exodus of two million refugees flowing across borders and destabilizing the entire area.

While we citizens are outraged at the massacre, the Bush White House and Congress seem insulated in an impervious bubble. They sit back and hope that a failing government can stabilize the warring factions that are engaged in civil war while our troops and Iraqi civilians get killed and blown up every day without an Action Plan to do something about it.

No one in our government has any PLAN to move ahead. This is disgraceful.

The reality is that Nuri al-Maliki’s so-called “unity government” is unwilling and incapable of accomplishing anything remotely close to the miracle of reconciliation that Iraq requires if it is to pull back from the abyss of total continued civil war!

This naive utopian dream is negated and rendered obsolete by the violent realities on the ground in Iraq today.

T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia), King Feisal, and Gertrude Bell

How Can the Voices of History Help Us Today?

Lawrence of Arabia led King Feisal’s Arab army to victory over the Ottoman Turks in World War I. Gertrude Bell, an expert in Arab history and language, along with Lawrence advised the new British rulers on how to create the new country of Iraq from two (and later three) Turkish “Vilyets.”

They recognized that Kurdistan was self-sufficient and could stand alone within Iraq. They knew that there were far more Shiites than Sunnis (in their separate parts of the new country) but strongly recommended that the Sunnis rule because they were the historic leaders – and that if the Shiites ruled – Iraq would become a theocracy – and that would lead to trouble.

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The most frightening reality is that an Islamist Shiite majority dominates this current government, and that it has no intention of giving up its power voluntarily.So we need a PLAN! For almost five years both the Bush administration and Congress have failed to respond to any of our new ideas (or to have any of their own) … until the passage on September 26, 2007, of Senator Biden’s Senate Amendment No. 2997 “Sense of Congress on Federalism in Iraq.”We at Goals for Americans Foundation do have a Plan — Plan V for VICTORY and Peace in Iraq. Our Plan embodies an intelligent arrangement of the Dynamic Forces and ethnic populations of Iraq into a proud Independent Country that can rise again like the Phoenix from the present ashes of despair.

See our detailed Map and full explanation.

In this expansive edition of America and the Future, we present several alternative peace plans, including our own.

These plans have all come forward within the past year from respected Congressional leaders, think tanks, journalists, political figures, and a highly regarded former Iraqi defense and finance minister. And our plan comes from a private foundation dedicated to the genius of democracy and the American dream.

These plans share a common desire for a peaceful and prosperous Iraq – an Iraq held together by mutual respect, genuine security, and common aspirations. An Iraq at peace with itself — and a dynamic contributor to the entire Mideast Region and the world.

Our hope is that these alternative peace plans will inspire you, whatever your role in our Government, to join with the majority of Americans who now demand that the Bush White House, Congress, State Department, and the National Security Council end their relentless pursuit of a failed policy in Iraq and immediately adopt a real plan for the future.

First, a bit more history on Lawrence of Arabia and the creation of Iraq…

T.E. Lawrence “Lawrence of Arabia”

Read his prophetic words after he led Feisal’s Semitic tribes (Arabs) against the Ottoman Turks (allies of Germany in World War I).

From the book Seven Pillars of Wisdom
by T.E. Lawrence

All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity, but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible. This I did. I meant to make a new nation, to restore a lost influence, to give twenty millions of Semites the foundations on which to build an inspired dream-palace of their national thoughts. So high an aim called out the inherent nobility of their minds, and made them play a generous part in events, but when we won, it was charged against me that the British petrol royalties in Mesopotamia were become dubious, and French Colonial policy ruined in the Levant.

I am afraid that I hope so. We pay for these things too much in honour and in innocent lives. I went up the Tigris with one hundred Devon Territorials, young, clean, delightful fellows, full of the power of happiness and of making women and children glad. By them one saw vividly how great it was to be their kin, and English. And we were casting them by thousands into the fire to the worst of deaths, not to win the war but that the corn and rice and oil of Mesopotamia might be ours. The only need was to defeat our enemies (Turkey among them), and this was at last done in the wisdom of Allenby with less than four hundred killed, by turning to our uses the hands of the oppressed in Turkey. I am proudest of my thirty fights in that I did not have any of our own blood shed. All our subject provinces to me were not worth one dead Englishman.

Iraq’s History

Mesopotamia: from 3000 B.C.:

The country that is now Iraq occupies a large part of the region once known as Mesopotamia, which has hosted numerous cultures over the centuries.

Ottoman Empire: 1631 – 1914:

Mesopotamia fell to the Ottoman Empire in the 16th century, and remained under Ottoman rule until the British invaded modern-day Iraq in World War I.

1914 – The Arab Revolt against their Ottoman rulers:

In November 1914 Great Britain declared war on the Ottoman Empire after the Ottomans formed an alliance with the Germans. At that time a small British army landed in the area of Kuwait and immediately took control of the oil fields, which were used to supply British naval forces.

1916 – 1918:

The British government in Egypt sent a young officer, Captain T.E. Lawrence, to work with the Arabs in their revolt against the Turks. Lawrence quickly launched a guerrilla war, blowing up supply and troop trains and harassing the Turks at every turn. As a result of Lawrence’s involvement with the Arab forces, the British were able to finally defeat the Ottoman armies in 1918.

1919: The Creation of Modern Iraq

The Sykes-Picot arrangement became partly formalized at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, the San Remo Conference a year later, and also by actions of the new League of Nations. Modern Iraq was essentially carved out of the collapsing Ottoman Empire at that time.

Initially cobbled together in August 1921 were two former Ottoman vilayets (regions), Baghdad and Basra. Five years later, in 1926, the northern vilayet of Mosul was added, forming the territorial boundaries of what remains today the Iraqi state.

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