“THE MESOPOTAMIA MESS” - THE STORY OF THE BRITISH INVASION OF IRAQ IN 1914 - AVAILABLE IN PAPERBACK, JANUARY, 2008

(Redondo Beach, CA) In 1914, the British invaded Mesopotamia (now called Iraq) to protect their oil interests in the region. What began as a limited military initiative, with no expectation for occupation, resulted in over four decades of active political and military involvement, including the battling of an insurgency against their rule.

The Mesopotamia Mess, a 220 page paperback book chronicling the events before, during, and after the invasion, will be released in January 2008 by InterLingua Publishing. A description of the book can be found at www. TheMesopotamiaMess.com.

“The similarities between the British invasion and occupation in 1914, and the current U.S. experience are remarkable,” says Jack Bernstein, the author/editor of the book. “There were many, many lessons that U.S. politicians and military could have – and should have – learned before the 2003 invasion.”

As soon as the hostilities ceased in both wars, wide scale looting occurred, and neither the British in 1914 nor the U.S. in 2003 appreciated the deep divide between the religious sects, nor their willingness to resort to violence to resolve their differences. The governments of both generations expected that once the yoke of oppression was lifted from their shoulders, the people of Iraq would focus on building a future, and not settling old scores. Both the British then and the U.S. now shared a vision of the three communities of Iraq working together as a single nation, but found a dysfunctional civil administration and little interest in comingling of cultures under one rule. Both governments accepted their roles as “peace, keepers” protecting the people, but the local population chose to fight their “occupiers” with bloody insurgencies. Both the British and the U.S. expected more assistance from their allies than they received, and sadly, both were completely unprepared for the enormous fnancial investment that had to be made and the terrible cost in human lives resulting from their invasions.

Some quotes from the book speak to the lessons that could have been learned:

“The British cobbled three disparate vilayets (Basra, Baghdad, and Mosul) together to take full advantage of Iraq's strategic and economic potential. To ensure this contrived nation remained intact and continued to do its bidding, the British installed a ruler they could influence; formulated a national-level governmental structure to ensure its dominance; and established a security apparatus dependent on its support.”

“Mesopotamia is inhabited solely by Arab tribes, and the Arabs are all Mohammedans. The Mohammedans of the world are divided into two main sects by irreconcilable differences of religious opinion; sects which in Mesopotamia have indulged in innumerable fearful contests for supremacy, all of which have tended to sink the country further and further into moral ruin and material exhaustion.”

“Parliament seriously discussed evacuating Iraq and Sir Percy Cox, High Commissioner in Iraq, argued that British ‘policy in Iraq was working, would bear dividends great enough to justify its continuance, and that, if prematurely curtailed, the result would be disastrous.’ He also stated that a withdrawal would lead inevitably to anarchy.”

“The irony, to me as an American, is that most of the information used in this book was made available from the U.S. and British military libraries,” says Bernstein. “I wish I believed that members of the administration and the military spent a few hours on the internet researching the history of the region before they decided to invade it.”

InterLingua Publishing is a 16-year-old Southern California-based company that specializes publishing materials that have “an international flavor,” including those that require translation to or from English. The most popular materials in the InterLingua catalog are leading edge technology reports translated from Japanese to English, and K-12 educational materials translated from English to Spanish.


For more information contact:
Jack Bernstein
310/792-3637
fax 310/792-3642
TheMesopotamiaMess@gmail.com

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