Plus ça change…
Lieutenant General Sir Stanley Maude, The Proclamation of Bagdhad – March 19, 1917.
Vs.
Donald Rumsfeld’s address to the Iraqi people – Wednesday April 30, 2003
1917: In the name of my King, and in the name of the peoples over whom he rules, I address you as follows…
2003: Hello, I’m Don Rumsfeld, the American secretary of defence.
1917: I am charged with the absolute and supreme control of all regions in which British troops operate; but our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators.
2003: I am pleased to visit Iraq – your country – to witness your liberation.
1917: It is the wish not only of my King and his peoples, but it is also the wish of the great nations with whom he is in alliance, that you should prosper even as in the past.
2003: The coalition is committed to helping you as you take control of your country and make the transition from tyranny to freedom and self-government.
1917: The British Government cannot remain indifferent as to what takes place in your country now or in the future for in duty to the interests of the British people and their Allies… O people of Baghdad remember that for twenty-six generations you have suffered under strange tyrants who have endeavoured to set one Arab house against another in order that they might profit by your dissensions.
2003: We also need to get rid of foreign fighters, those from neighbouring countries who are seeking to hijack your country for their own purposes. Please help remove this threat by approaching coalition forces with any information you may have about the activities and whereabouts of any foreign fighters in your area.
1917: But you people of Baghdad, whose commercial prosperity and whose safety from oppression and invasion must ever be a matter of the closest concern to the British Government, are not to understand that it is the wish of British Government to impose upon you alien institutions.
2003: We are committed to helping you as you build a new Iraq where they will have those opportunities. Let me be clear: Iraq belongs to you. We do not want to run it. Our coalition came to Iraq for a purpose – to remove a regime that oppressed your people and threatened ours.
1917: Therefore I am commanded to invite you, through your nobles and elders and representatives, to participate in the management of your civil affairs in collaboration with the political representatives of Great Britain who accompany the British Army, so that you may be united with your kinsmen in North, East, South, and West in realising the aspirations of your race.
2003: Our goal is to restore stability and security so that you can form an interim government and eventually a free Iraqi government – a government of your choosing, a government that is of Iraqi design and Iraqi choice. We will stay as long as necessary to help you do that, and not a day longer.
(1917: I say, do you think they understood a bloody word I said?
2003: So, you think they bought it?)
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