Saturday, February 25, 2006

Delanceyplace.com 03/01/06-bombing iraq in 1919

In today's excerpt, a foreshadowing of contemporary (and underreported) bombing in Iraq:

"Just after the Great War (World War I), Britain designed a new system of imperial policing known as 'air control' and applied it in Iraq, lately wrested from the Turkish Empire. In this scheme, the Royal Air Force patrolled the country from a network of bases, bombarding villages and tribes as needed to put down unrest and subversive activities. It was in Iraq that the British first practiced, if never perfected, the technology of bombardment, there that they first attempted to fully theorize the value of airpower as an independent arm of the military. "

Priya Satia, The American Historical Review, 'The Defense of Inhumanity, AirControl and the British Idea of Arabia, February 2006, Volume III, Number 1, p. 16

1 Comments:

Blogger Michael Ethan Landau said...

When you say that this quotation foreshadows contemporary events, do you mean the bombing in the opening days of the war, or what is going on right now?

11:20 AM  

Post a Comment

<< Home