The West's desire to 'liberate' the Middle East remains as flawed as ever | Voices | Th... - 0 views
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The West's desire to ‘liberate’ the Middle East remains as flawed as ever
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As General de Gaulle set out for the Middle East in April of 1941, he famously wrote that “towards the complicated Orient, I flew with simple ideas”. They all did. Napoleon was going to "liberate" Cairo, and Bush and Blair were going to "liberate" Iraq; and Obama, briefly, was going to "liberate" Syria.
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And so they still must be. But back in 1941, things went badly wrong for de Gaulle’s tiny Free French army. The "Army of the Levant" – officially fighting for Vichy France – did not surrender. Anxious to avoid the shame of the French military collapse before the Nazi Wehrmacht in April and May of 1940, it fought with great bravery against both de Gaulle’s rag-tag army and the British and Australians who accompanied them.
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Back again now to the 1941 Allied invasion of Lebanon. Among the British forces was Sergeant Major Frank Armour, almost certainly fighting in a Scottish Commando unit that was badly hit in the first stages of the attack. He and his fellow officers arrived in "liberated" Beirut and were billeted on the top two floors of Salim Boustani’s home, and last week I walked through their rooms with their beautiful Italian architrave window frames and views over the Mediterranean, a glorious olive garden and banana plantation next door.
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Dentz did not face the firing squad, but he died a slow death, deliberately brought about by a nation which imprisoned him in dank, freezing cells, dripping with water. On 22 November 1955, he wrote in his diary: “They have taken away my overcoat and scarf…I am writing absolutely numb in mind and body.” December 13: “The walls are running like little waterfalls…the best time is when one goes to bed…and, for a few hours, everything is forgotten.” They were his last words.
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Petain shared Dentz’s fate. De Gaulle became president of France. Assad remains president of Syria. Better to be a small soldier, I suppose, like Frank Armour. He, too, came to the complicated Orient. Surely not with simple ideas. I guess he fell in love with the place.