On the eve of America's third anniversary in Iraq, historians are looking back and seeing a familiar pattern emerge:
A Western army attempts to impose order on Iraq but encounters unanticipated, violent resistance. As casualties and domestic opposition mount, the occupiers redefine the mission and look for an exit. Iraq slides toward ruin.
In the view of some historians, the 21st-century American-led occupation is taking on the appearance of the British attempt to transplant Western-style democracy on Iraq after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I.
Both the Americans and the British eight decades ago "seem to have gone into Iraq thinking that all you need to do is remove the shackles of the previous regime and something more democratic will emerge," said Phebe Marr, a senior fellow at the United States Institute of Peace and author of The Modern History of Iraq.
In the current issue of Foreign Affairs magazine, U.S. Army Maj. Joel Rayburn says that growing domestic opposition to the U.S. mission in Iraq is similar to the "Quit Mesopotamia" movement in Britain in the late 1920s, which forced an accelerated turnover of power.
Rayburn argues that Britain's premature departure before firmly establishing democratic institutions set up Iraq for the eventual takeover by authoritarian regimes, culminating in Saddam Hussein's rule for more than two decades...
"The greatest British sin," Rayburn said in an interview, "was setting up democratic institutions in Iraq and then abdicating responsibility to make sure those institutions were not hijacked by people who didn't mean well.
'Sound Familiar?' To Historians, Iraq Unrest Does
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