{"id":1555,"date":"2003-11-13T14:56:51","date_gmt":"2003-11-13T19:56:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/vardibidian\/2003\/11\/13\/1555.html"},"modified":"2018-03-12T16:43:29","modified_gmt":"2018-03-12T21:43:29","slug":"suez","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2003\/11\/13\/suez\/","title":{"rendered":"Suez"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As a matter of coincidence, I happened to come across a discussion of the Suez crisis<\/a> in Whitehall<\/i><\/a>, by Peter Hennessy (New York: Free Press © 1989), and of course it started me thinking about paths to invasion, and repercussions.\n\n

I have read bits from letters, newspaper columns, or diaries which show that several different people involved in UK foreign affairs were absolutely devastated by Suez, and never really recovered. Their views on it differed, of course, one to another, but they all felt betrayed. Britons who against the invasion from the beginning felt betrayed by the invasion, and those who were for it felt betrayed by the withdrawal. People felt betrayed by the untruths told by the Government, and people felt betrayed by the exposure of those untruths. People felt betrayed by the way in which Russia and the US got involved, and people felt betrayed by their tardiness in getting involved.\n\n

Of course, many Big Historical Events are like this; one could similar things about the Bolshevik Revolution, or the US Civil War, or the Munich Olympics. I do get the sense that people felt very strongly that they had been betrayed, not fatalistically, not cynically, not wearily, but with pain and outrage and distress. I understand all of that, now.\n\n

Honestly, the US-led invasion of Iraq last Spring is likely, in the long run, to be as minor an event as Suez, or even Vietnam. After all, the question of who holds Ho Chi Minh city is not, in 2003, of tremendous strategic importance. The cultural place is higher than the actual events may warrant, and that's because the number of people senselessly slaughtered in Vietnam or Iraq is (in the big picture) miniscule, and the number of people materially unaffected is enormous. The number of people who have had their understanding of the world changed, the number of people who are, angrily, rethinking their ideas about government structures and their own place in the world, is very high. Not just our own fellow citizens, but everywhere.\n\n

Oh, and since I don't really know anything about military history at all, can some Gentle Reader inform me—has any nation in the last 50 years invaded another nation against the will of the UN and not regretted it later?\n\n

Redintegro Iraq,
-Vardibidian.\n<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As a matter of coincidence, I happened to come across a discussion of the Suez crisis in Whitehall, by Peter Hennessy (New York: Free Press © 1989), and of course it started me thinking about paths to invasion, and repercussions….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[201],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-navel-gazing"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1555"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1555\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16864,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1555\/revisions\/16864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}