History: The Cradle of Civilization Part I
I’ve spouted off here and there in bits and pieces in this blog about the situation in Iraq but I don’t remember if I have put everything together. A recent online conversation made me do so for the first time in a long time and I though it worthwhile to write it all out for those here curious, or those making assumptions…
First let me whip you through a highly condensed tour of Iraq’s history so you can see where I am coming from. (Here is a site with a more detailed history of ancient Mesopotamia and a timeline for all of Iraq’s history)
Iraq is where human culture as we know it began. If you are a Christian it is literally the Garden of Eden. Right there at the juncture of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and what is awesome is that there are people still living there who are probably for the most part, still living, or trying to live, the same lifestyle they were living before the Sumerian civilization kicked in.
Starting in the 4th millennia B.C. the Sumerian city states came and went in the area between the rivers. They built canals to channel the water to the fields and cities grew up around ritual centers, places that started with shrines that eventually became massive step pyramids. They invented writing to keep records and gave us the first literature. Each city-state had a patron God or Goddess and they went to war with each other much as Greek City States did 2000 years later. Until the an Akkadian named Sargon got ambitious in 2340 B.C. and stuffed some of the cities together into an empire, but that only lasted around 150 years. A little while later the Babylonian empire arose, which is the one discussed in the Old Testament so much and gave us the world’s first written set of laws (that we know of): The Code of Hammurabi. The Babylonian empire was taken over in turns by the Hittites, Assyrians and Chaldeans but they all seem to have been similar cultures and happy just adapting their culture to the pre-existing Empire (sorta like when the Goths took over Rome, they didn’t make the Romans become Germanic, they became Roman). Nebuchadnezzar was a Chaldean Babylonian.
In, 539 B.C. they were conquered by the Persians and they brought with them Zoroastrianism, which put to rest all the old Gods of Sumer.
And that, my friends, was the end of cultural self-rule in Iraq. They have not been on their own for any appreciable amount of time since. Unless you could Hussien as “self rule”.
They were conquered by the Persians in 539 and later the Persified Greek, Alex the Great himself in 331 B.C.. In 638 A.D. the Arab-Islamic conquest took place and in Year of our Lord 1466, the Turks took over. In the 16th century, Iraq became part of the Ottoman Empire.
The Ottoman Empire is pretty much the reason that the Middle East that maintained a great intellectual tradition during the Middle Ages and bore the West’s first colleges became the…I hate using the word, but “backwards” fits that we know today with an average illiteracy rate of 25% of men and 50% of women among Arab countries.
Now we get to the stuff that is affecting us today. During World War I, the Ottoman Empire collapsed and the Western powers, especially England and France, carved up the Empire’s Mediterranean holdings. Britain raced to grab Iraq’s oil fields in the North, despite a “Let’s Share” treaty signed with France day’s prior. C’est la Guerre.
England drew an arbitrary border about three disparate ethnic groups and called it Iraq. From 1917 to 1932, England nation built in Iraq. They, with T.E. Lawrence’s (yes *that* Lawrence) help created a Hashimite (Sunni) Monarchy and bicameral parliament and after getting them to sign a treaty very favorable to the English. Then they bombed the Kurds a few times and left. After a military coup or five brought an anti-U.K. group to power, the English reinvaded in 1941 to basically put every thing back in place.
Maybe France got the better end of the deal after all.
The government the British set up in lasted a whole whopping 17 years, in 1958 there was a revolution and Iraq became a Republic.
But since that republic was friendly with the U.S.S.R. that lasted a whole whopping 5 years when the secular Ba’athists held a revolution and set up a military dictatorship in which Hussein consolidated more and more power unto himself until he was *the* dictator by the 1970’s.
We all know what happened from there. We supported him in his conflict with Iran because we like secular tyrants over religious ones. (See: Stalin) Then he invaded Kuwait, threatened to kill George H. W. and George W. invaded in 2003.
And now here we are.
And what do we do about it?
To Be Continued...
First let me whip you through a highly condensed tour of Iraq’s history so you can see where I am coming from. (Here is a site with a more detailed history of ancient Mesopotamia and a timeline for all of Iraq’s history)
Iraq is where human culture as we know it began. If you are a Christian it is literally the Garden of Eden. Right there at the juncture of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and what is awesome is that there are people still living there who are probably for the most part, still living, or trying to live, the same lifestyle they were living before the Sumerian civilization kicked in.
Starting in the 4th millennia B.C. the Sumerian city states came and went in the area between the rivers. They built canals to channel the water to the fields and cities grew up around ritual centers, places that started with shrines that eventually became massive step pyramids. They invented writing to keep records and gave us the first literature. Each city-state had a patron God or Goddess and they went to war with each other much as Greek City States did 2000 years later. Until the an Akkadian named Sargon got ambitious in 2340 B.C. and stuffed some of the cities together into an empire, but that only lasted around 150 years. A little while later the Babylonian empire arose, which is the one discussed in the Old Testament so much and gave us the world’s first written set of laws (that we know of): The Code of Hammurabi. The Babylonian empire was taken over in turns by the Hittites, Assyrians and Chaldeans but they all seem to have been similar cultures and happy just adapting their culture to the pre-existing Empire (sorta like when the Goths took over Rome, they didn’t make the Romans become Germanic, they became Roman). Nebuchadnezzar was a Chaldean Babylonian.
In, 539 B.C. they were conquered by the Persians and they brought with them Zoroastrianism, which put to rest all the old Gods of Sumer.
And that, my friends, was the end of cultural self-rule in Iraq. They have not been on their own for any appreciable amount of time since. Unless you could Hussien as “self rule”.
They were conquered by the Persians in 539 and later the Persified Greek, Alex the Great himself in 331 B.C.. In 638 A.D. the Arab-Islamic conquest took place and in Year of our Lord 1466, the Turks took over. In the 16th century, Iraq became part of the Ottoman Empire.
The Ottoman Empire is pretty much the reason that the Middle East that maintained a great intellectual tradition during the Middle Ages and bore the West’s first colleges became the…I hate using the word, but “backwards” fits that we know today with an average illiteracy rate of 25% of men and 50% of women among Arab countries.
Now we get to the stuff that is affecting us today. During World War I, the Ottoman Empire collapsed and the Western powers, especially England and France, carved up the Empire’s Mediterranean holdings. Britain raced to grab Iraq’s oil fields in the North, despite a “Let’s Share” treaty signed with France day’s prior. C’est la Guerre.
England drew an arbitrary border about three disparate ethnic groups and called it Iraq. From 1917 to 1932, England nation built in Iraq. They, with T.E. Lawrence’s (yes *that* Lawrence) help created a Hashimite (Sunni) Monarchy and bicameral parliament and after getting them to sign a treaty very favorable to the English. Then they bombed the Kurds a few times and left. After a military coup or five brought an anti-U.K. group to power, the English reinvaded in 1941 to basically put every thing back in place.
Maybe France got the better end of the deal after all.
The government the British set up in lasted a whole whopping 17 years, in 1958 there was a revolution and Iraq became a Republic.
But since that republic was friendly with the U.S.S.R. that lasted a whole whopping 5 years when the secular Ba’athists held a revolution and set up a military dictatorship in which Hussein consolidated more and more power unto himself until he was *the* dictator by the 1970’s.
We all know what happened from there. We supported him in his conflict with Iran because we like secular tyrants over religious ones. (See: Stalin) Then he invaded Kuwait, threatened to kill George H. W. and George W. invaded in 2003.
And now here we are.
And what do we do about it?
To Be Continued...
posted by KiplingKat | 7:56 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home