Looking at events in Iraq today.. I wonder if it would be helpful for Americans to have a hard and realistic look at the history of the USA. There are some events which suggest different interpretations to the standard Liberty Trial stories for example and thinking these through could be helpful in reading current dynamics.
Is this week the Lexington and Concord of the Iraq entanglements for example?
As I understand it the usual story is this. An arrogant British administration in Massachusetts sent out a raiding force into the peaceful countryside to seize a modest stock of arms held in a provincial armoury, this being the private property of patriotic militias. Thanks to an inspired warning systems the militias were able to gather and were fired on by the occupiers at the site of the armoury, the militias then responding with a spontaneous uprising that harried the British back to their base.
The alternative story is that a substantial uprising was already in progress in Massachussets with legitimate authority figures harried across the countryside. Tarrings and featherings and dispossessions of local mayors, for example, and refugees were streaming into Boston asking for protection. There was considerable agitation for firm action by the authorities. The British authorities heard of a substantial armoury being built up by the coalescing insurgents, including standardised muskets and most importantly heavy siege artillery. Acting on real but fragmentary intelligence a force was sent out to remove this threat.
This was just what the insurgent networks wanted. The Massachussets violence was viewed with alarm by respectable patriots in other colonies. The insurgent leaders, Sam Adams and Paul Revere, needed an event to turn the emotional tide. They needed an overt British action, a spectacular local military conflagration and above all they needed dead Americans. With dead Americans a scream of 'Tyranny!' could be heard. They set up a trap, a well-organised and premeditated ambush. The British walked into it, and Adams and Revere got all three of their objectives. Extemplary spin doctoring did the rest.
The British were quite right about the heavy artillery by the way - the guns emerged a few days after the Lexington and Concord events in the siege of Boston.
What insurgents in Iraq needed this last week was overt military activities by US forces, a spectacular local conflagration and above all dead Iraqis. The US seems to have walked into this trap.
Sam Adams (the professional precursor of Karl Rove) and his helpers spun Lexington into a myth that united people with very different ideas and agendas into a process that created unexpected unity. We await with interest how the emerging spin and uproar will deal with the Modern Lobsterbacks in the US and Coalition forces. People seem to be surprised that Shia and Sunni Iraqis are coming together to resist, even though they did the same in a revolt against the British in 1920.. There was surprise in 1775 that aristocratic slave-owners and New England religious radicals could come together in more or less the same cause.
Historical analogies are dangerous things but understanding US history as it actually happened might help todays Americans understand the way people create facts in periods of huge stress.
Edis
