SOURCE: Juan Cole's Blog (Informed Comment)
8-28-05
comments powered by Disqus
8-28-05
Juan Cole: Why Iraq Isn't Malaysia
Roundup: Historians' Take
Steve Gilliard drives a silver stake through the persistent hope of some that Iraq's"insurgency" can be defeated as the communists were defeated by the British in colonial Malaya (Malaysia). This comparison always neglects to note that the British had been the colonial power in Malaya since the nineteenth century, with a brief interregnum. They hadn't just shown up suddenly in 1952. They had enormous logistical and intelligence advantages deriving from this long presence. Moreover, the defeat of the mostly Chinese communists in a largely Malay country came just before the British were forced to give the country independence. I was on a radio show with John Mearsheimer and Max Boot one time, and Boot (inevitably and tritely) brought up the British success in counter-insurgency in Malaya. Mearsheimer witheringly pointed out"The British aren't in Malaysia anymore."
See also Bulloch, who points out that the British achieved a 20 to 1 military superiority over the guerrillas in Malaya!
Read entire article at Juan Cole's Blog (Informed Comment)
See also Bulloch, who points out that the British achieved a 20 to 1 military superiority over the guerrillas in Malaya!
comments powered by Disqus
News
- Josh Hawley Earns F in Early American History
- Does Germany's Holocaust Education Give Cover to Nativism?
- "Car Brain" Has Long Normalized Carnage on the Roads
- Hawley's Use of Fake Patrick Henry Quote a Revealing Error
- Health Researchers Show Segregation 100 Years Ago Harmed Black Health, and Effects Continue Today
- Nelson Lichtenstein on a Half Century of Labor History
- Can America Handle a 250th Anniversary?
- New Research Shows British Industrialization Drew Ironworking Methods from Colonized and Enslaved Jamaicans
- The American Revolution Remains a Hotly Contested Symbolic Field
- Untangling Fact and Fiction in the Story of a Nazi-Era Brothel