1200 1UI4USFFU/8t8BTIJOHUPO
%$ttGBY

SPECIAL REPORT 225 JUNE 2009

41&$*"- REPORT

aCZUIF6OJUFE4UBUFT*OTUJUVUFPG1FBDF

"MMSJHIUTSFTFSWFE

CONTENTS

The Fallacy of Analogy: World War II as Americans’

“Good War” 2

The Power of Precedent: Arabs’ Memory 

of World War I 3

Justice Interrupted: Arabs’ Response to Occupation 4

 Conclusion: The Use of Historical Precedent 

in U.S. Policy 7

ABOUT THE REPORT

Elizabeth F. Thompson, associate professor of history at the 

University of Virginia, was a Jennings Randolph fellow at USIP 

in 2007–08. This report, drawn from her forthcoming book, 

Seeking Justice in the Middle East, builds bridges between two 

worlds that have remained separate in recent years: academic 

history of the Middle East and foreign policymaking in the 

region. The author thanks USIP for its support, Meagan Bridges 

for her research assistance, and commentators on previous 

drafts: Nathan Brown, David Edelstein, Melvyn Leffler, Jeff 

Legro, William Quandt, Abdul-Karim Rafeq, Barbara Slavin, 

Bob Vitalis, David Waldner, and audiences at the History 

Department at Catholic University of America, the Institute 

for Middle East Studies at George Washington University, the 

Women’s Foreign Policy Group, and the Woodrow Wilson Center, 

all in Washington, D.C. 

Elizabeth F. Thompson

+VTUJDF*OUFSSVQUFE

)JTUPSJDBM1FSTQFDUJWFTPO1SPNPUJOH%FNPDSBDZ

JOUIF.JEEMF&BTU

4VNNBSZ

t Foreign affairs experts routinely use historical analogy to develop and justify policy. 

However, as professional historians have long noted, attractive analogies often lead 

to bad policies. Officials regularly choose analogies that neglect or distort the historical case they aim to illuminate. Nonetheless, history can be used effectively in 

international relations.

t To do so, practitioners must first recognize the difference between historical analogy 

and precedent. Historical precedent, drawn from the past of the region in question, 

is a safer guide to policy than historical analogy, which is based on comparisons to 

events in other regions. Because historical precedent is a self-limiting form of analogy restricted to a certain place, people, and time, it provides a better indication of 

how a certain society understands and responds to a given situation.

t The recent U.S. intervention in Iraq highlights the misuses of history: American leaders employed analogies to World War II to justify the invasion and to predict success 

in establishing a democratic regime after. These analogies proved to be a poor guide 

to nation building in the short term. In the long term, they have deeply aggravated 

U.S. relations with Iraqis and the rest of the Arab world.

t A more effective use of history would have been to refer to the precedent of World 

War I, a crucial moment when American policy could have supported indigenous Arab 

constitutional democracy—but, fatefully, did not.

t For the new administration, the Arabs’ experience of “justice interrupted” after World 

War I can still be a useful touchstone for promoting democracy in the region.1 This 

precedent alerts us that foreign intervention can spark a deep-seated and negative 

political reaction in the postcolonial Arab world and that reform in Arab politics must 

begin with respect for national sovereignty. It also reminds us that constitutionalism and the desire to participate in the community of international law are enduring 

values in Arab politics. 

6/*5&%45"5&4 */45*565&0'1&"$& XXXVTJQPSH
2

5IF'BMMBDZPG"OBMPHZ8PSME8BS**BT"NFSJDBOTi(PPE8BSw

During the last half-century, the most popular analogy Americans have used to justify 

war has been World War II. For Americans, it was a just war against an evil enemy that 

concluded honorably with the benevolent postwar reconstruction of Japan and Germany. In efforts to repeat the “Good War,” policymakers made analogies to World War 

II to plan and justify wars in Korea and Vietnam, even though these comparisons were 

not appropriate.2 

Regarding Iraq, President George W. Bush first deployed an analogy to World War II in 

his January 29, 2002, State of the Union address. He and his speechwriters deliberately 

used the term “axis of evil” when describing the link between terrorism and nuclear 

weapons in order to invoke the Axis powers.3 In March 2003, on the eve of the Iraq 

invasion, Bush made the analogy even more explicit. He compared Saddam Hussein to 

Hitler and warned against appeasing him: “In this century, when evil men plot chemical, 

biological and nuclear terror, a policy of appeasement could bring destruction of a kind 

never before seen on this earth.”4

Bush was not the first to use dramatic language to garner public support. Since the 

time of Woodrow Wilson, argues political scientist Jeffrey Tulis, presidents have used 

rhetoric to “go over the heads” of Congress and circumvent normal channels of deliberative policymaking. In the hands of the press, Tulis argues, presidential rhetoric often 

takes on a life of its own.5 In Bush’s case, his World War II analogy not only precluded 

consideration of policy alternatives inside his administration but also stoked a media 

frenzy that extended the analogy to other Middle East policy questions. Thomas Friedman of the New York Times provided a leading example when he called the terrorist 

attacks of September 11, 2001, “the Pearl Harbor of World War III,”6 and the Iraq invasion “the most important liberal, revolutionary U.S. democracy-building project since 

the Marshall Plan.”7 For Friedman and others, the analogy also supported comparisons of 

Muslim activists to Nazis, thus justifying a militant policy in the Islamic world. 

Historians, meanwhile, strongly criticized analogizing World War II to Iraq. John 

Dower, the premier scholar of postwar Japan’s reconstruction, correctly predicted before 

the invasion that Iraq lacked critical elements that had enabled successful nation building in Germany and Japan.8 But at a time when expansive analogies to the Good War 

captivated the public and media, he was ignored. 

Indeed, in hindsight, the analogy is weak at best. Saddam was no Hitler: he commanded neither a powerful army nor a loyal party machine and had no weapons of mass 

destruction. While dismantling the Nazi Party and its membership was an important 

part of postwar political reconstruction in Germany, in Iraq, following the same policy 

by purging the Baath Party and its members produced an institutional vacuum that 

nearly ended hopes of establishing democratic rule of law. Six years after the invasion, the press and the new administration have finally abandoned the analogy to 

World War II.9

But finding a better analogy is not easy. Valid comparisons between circumstances in 

different times and places are extremely difficult to identify and justify, as any political 

scientist can attest. 

Historical precedent, however, is less prone to error. It is drawn directly from people’s 

historical experience and examines the past of a particular place where people today 

continue to experience the preceding event’s legacy through institutions, memory, and 

culture. As a result, precedent is a more certain indicator of how people of a particular 

region might respond to U.S. policy. 

Today, in 2009, the new administration could use historical precedent to set Middle 

East policy on a new track. The most powerful precedent, in the eyes of Iraqis and their 

Arab neighbors, is World War I, not World War II. At that time, Arabs rallied to President 

Woodrow Wilson’s promises of liberation and self-determination. After the war, Arabs 

convened a constitutional congress in a bid to build their own state upon the cinders 

ABOUT THE INSTITUTE

The United States Institute of Peace is an independent, 

nonpartisan institution established and funded by 

Congress. Its goals are to help prevent and resolve 

violent conflicts, promote post-conflict peacebuilding, 

and increase conflict management tools, capacity, and 

intellectual capital worldwide. The Institute does this by 

empowering others with knowledge, skills, and resources, 

as well as by its direct involvement in conflict zones 

around the globe.

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

J. Robinson West (Chair), Chairman, PFC Energy, Washington, 

%$ t (FPSHF&.PPTF(Vice Chairman), Adjunct Professor 

of Practice, The George Washington University, Washington, 

%$ t "OOF)$BIO, Former Scholar in Residence, American 

6OJWFSTJUZ
 8BTIJOHUPO
 %$ t $IFTUFS"$SPDLFS, James R. 

Schlesinger Professor of Strategic Studies, School of Foreign 

4FSWJDF
 (FPSHFUPXO 6OJWFSTJUZ
 8BTIJOHUPO
 %$ t *LSBN6

,IBO, President, Quality Care Consultants, LLC., Las Vegas, 

/FW t ,FSSZ,FOOFEZ
 )VNBO 3JHIUT "DUJWJTU t 4UFQIFO%

,SBTOFS
Graham H. Stuart Professor of International Relations 

BU 4UBOGPSE 6OJWFSTJUZ t ,BUIMFFO.BSUJOF[, Executive Director, 

8PSME *OTUJUVUF PO %JTBCJMJUZ t +FSFNZ"3BCLJO, Professor of 

-BX
 (FPSHF .BTPO 6OJWFSTJUZ
 "SMJOHUPO
 7B t +VEZ7BO3FTU, 

Executive Vice President, International Republican Institute, 

8BTIJOHUPO
 %$ t /BODZ;JSLJO, Executive Vice President, 

Leadership Conference on Civil Rights 

MEMBERS EX OFFICIO

3PCFSU.(BUFT
 %FQBSUNFOU PG %FGFOTF t )JMMBSZ3PEIBN

$MJOUPO
 4FDSFUBSZ PG 4UBUF t 3JDIBSE)4PMPNPO, President, 

6OJUFE 4UBUFT *OTUJUVUF PG 1FBDF 	OPOWPUJOH
 t 'SBODFT$

8JMTPO, Lieutenant General, U.S. Marine Corps; President, 

National Defense University

The views expressed in this report do not necessarily 

reflect the views of the United States Institute of Peace, 

which does not advocate specific policy positions.

To request permission to photocopy or reprint materials, 

e-mail: permissions@usip.org


of the Ottoman Empire. Their representative at the Paris Peace Conference, where they 

hoped to find support for their independent state, was the Arab Prince Faysal, friend of 

T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia). To Arabs, justice was denied when the British and 

French instead decided to occupy their lands. That point in Arab political history is as 

significant as the 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor is in American history. Any new plan to 

promote democracy in the Arab world must begin by recouping this moment of “justice 

interrupted” ninety years ago. 

5IF1PXFSPG1SFDFEFOU"SBCT.FNPSZPG8PSME8BS*

For the peoples of the Ottoman Empire, including Arabs, World War I was as painful as it 

was for Europeans. One million Ottoman Armenians, who lived just north of Syria, died 

in what would later be called the first genocide of the modern era. Another 500,000 

civilians, mostly Arabs in Greater Syria, died of famine caused in large part by the 

Allies’ blockade. Three fourths of the Ottoman Empire’s adult male population had been 

drafted into the army; an untold number never returned home.

Many Arabs rejoiced at the defeat of the Young Turks’ military regime. Like Armenians, they had feared annihilation under a Turkish military that regarded them as a 

fifth column. Some continued to seek an alliance with Turkish nationalist Mustafa 

Kemal (Ataturk), but most believed that only full sovereignty, under a state committed 

to Arab welfare, could revive their devastated people. Hope came in newspapers handed 

from café to café and smuggled from town to town. In 1917, Egyptian papers had begun 

publishing full translations of President Wilson’s speeches, including the famous Fourteen Points speech of January 1918, which proclaimed the right of even the smallest 

nations to choose their governments. 

Rashid Rida, editor of the most popular Islamic journal of the day, The Lighthouse, 

wrote a letter to Wilson from Cairo urging him to block British occupation of Iraq and 

Palestine as a violation of Arabs’ right to national self-determination. Rida also wrote 

to British Prime Minister David Lloyd George expressing Arab fears that British rule 

would “efface Islam from the surface of the earth.”10 The British had occupied Baghdad 

in March 1917 with a public proclamation that they came not as conquerors, but as 

liberators. Yet they banned publication of Wilson’s Fourteen Points in Baghdad until late 

1918.11 Likewise, the British occupied Jerusalem in December 1917, keeping secret until 

the war’s end their promise to make a Jewish national home in Palestine. 

In January 1919, as Prince Faysal waited for a hearing at the Paris Peace Conference, 

Wilson was unsuccessful in convincing Britain and France to recognize small states. The 

Europeans insisted upon expanding their colonial empires, and Wilson did not wield 

the leverage to resist. He therefore consented to a compromise that gave Britain and 

France temporary control over areas in Africa and Asia in exchange for their support of 

his League of Nations. Yet evidence in his papers of 1919 suggests that Wilson hoped 

to use the league to renew his promise of self-determination to small states.12

Faysal finally got his hearing on February 6, 1919. “The Arab army fought to win its 

freedom. It lost heavily; some 20,000 were killed,” he told the Council of Ten, gathered 

that afternoon at the Quai d’Orsay. Arabs had earned the right to independence, he 

claimed, after suffering centuries of “slavery” under the Ottomans. A sovereign Arab 

state would welcome advice from the Great Powers and would serve Western interests: 

“The Arabs realized how much their country lacked development. But they wanted 

to be a link between East and West, to hand on Western civilization to Asia,” the 

prince explained.13

French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau responded with silence. President Wilson 

asked only whether Arabs would prefer a single mandate or to be divided among multiple mandates. Faysal must have known then that Wilson’s new world order had already 

met its demise. But Wilson raised his hopes again a few days later, when he presented 

The British had occupied 

Baghdad in March 1917 with 

a public proclamation that they 

came not as conquerors, 

but as liberators. 


the Covenant of the League of Nations to the world. “We are done with annexations 

of helpless people,” Wilson told a Paris crowd. “The miasma of distrust, of intrigue, is 

cleared away. Men are looking eye to eye and saying: We are brothers and have a common purpose.”14

Faysal returned to Damascus, Syria, in May 1919, and called for elections to a 

Syrian-Arab General Congress to write a constitution that would prove the Arab nation 

deserved to be free. More than 100 Arabs from regions soon to be divided into Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, and Turkey convened in Damascus.15 Arab elites told a delegation 

sent by Wilson that they preferred independence. Their second choice would be a U.S. 

mandate because Americans had “entered the war on behalf of the oppressed nations” 

and “believed, perhaps more than any other people, in the high possibilities of the 

League of Nations.”16 

These Arab elites sought inclusion in the community of nation-states and international law. They also sought a unified state that would secure their stability and 

prosperity. Prominent Lighthouse editor Rashid Rida warned that if the peace conference 

divided Arab lands into weak states, Muslim Arabs would conclude that at Paris, “right, 

justice, and freedom were only intended for Christians.”17 

Rida’s fear that universal rights and international law might be applied unfairly 

reflected the history of European intervention in his lifetime. Since the late nineteenth 

century, Russia, Britain, France, and Austria had intervened to protect Christian and 

Jewish minorities not only out of altruistic concern but also as an excuse to expand 

their influence. The result was tyranny and inequality: The Ottomans used the European 

threat to their sovereignty to justify suspending the constitution, and Europeans and 

non-Muslims claimed legal and economic privileges that undermined the rule of law and 

aggravated social inequality.

In Arab eyes, Britain’s deal-making with the French at Paris fit squarely in this 

nineteenth-century mold of self-serving intervention. In the fall of 1919, the British 

withdrew their troops from Syria in exchange for France’s approval of a British mandate 

to rule Palestine. The fates of small nations were, as Wilson had warned repeatedly in 

speeches, merely barter for the Great Powers.

+VTUJDF*OUFSSVQUFE"SBCT3FTQPOTFUP0DDVQBUJPO

The Arabs in Damascus responded in March 1920 by proclaiming Faysal king of an independent constitutional monarchy called the Syrian Arab Kingdom. It claimed rule over 

the territory that Arabs believed Britain had promised them during the war, including 

modern-day Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and part of Palestine. The British disputed the 

promised borders, while the French insisted that Britain had promised Syria to them. 

The choice of a constitutional monarchy was both a strategy to impress the Great 

Powers and a reflection of Arabs’ political experience. Arab elites had previously participated in constitutional regimes in 1860s Tunisia, 1876–78 Istanbul, 1882 Egypt, and 

again in 1908–12 Istanbul. In Mount Lebanon, Arabs had lived under a locally elected 

council since 1860. Faysal himself had served as a deputy in the Istanbul Parliament. 

By 1920, in Arab experience and in Arabic newspapers, constitutionalism had become 

the accepted model of justice.

Details of the congress’s deliberations demonstrate how Arabs, uncoached by Europeans, engaged in a democratic process. An opposition party, the Democratic Party, used 

populist appeals to its Damascus base to challenge Faysal’s Progressive Party, which 

attracted a cosmopolitan elite of Arab bureaucrats and officers from Baghdad, Arabia, 

Palestine, and Istanbul. The Democrats’ political language was more Islamic than Faysal’s, but also more democratic. With workers’ demonstrations and preachers’ sermons, 

they pressured Faysal’s regime to pursue a bottom-up program of reform. 

The choice of a constitutional 

monarchy was both a strategy 

to impress the Great Powers 

and a reflection of Arabs’ 

political experience.


Under Democratic pressure, the congress limited royal power. When it crowned Faysal 

king in March 1920, it required him to pledge support for the rule of law, equality under 

the law, education for the people, and the award of government jobs based on merit. 

Faysal did not claim dynastic prerogative. To demonstrate that sovereignty lay with the 

people, citizens of the nation led the royal procession, and Faysal followed them.18 

Faysal and his Progressive Party favored negotiating a compromise with the French 

that would give France an advisory role in the Arab kingdom; Democrats, however, 

opposed any concessions on sovereignty. When the British and French signed the San 

Remo Agreement, the Democrats gained the upper hand in the congress. On May 3, 

1920, the congress elected Rashid Rida as its president. A native of Tripoli, Lebanon, he 

had left Cairo to join the congress in Damascus in late 1919. Although Rida belonged 

to the Progressive Party, he sympathized with Democrats who sought to guard Arabs’ 

full sovereignty.

Faysal insisted that since he had first issued the call for a congress, it had to follow his foreign policy. Rida responded, “No! The Congress created you. . . . It was the 

Congress that made you King of Syria.”19 Islamic law, Rida told Faysal, required that 

sovereignty rest with the people. Rida then opened congressional debate on the constitution. In ten weeks, members ratified 148 articles.20 

The constitution was the most democratic yet seen in the Middle East: It called for 

the separation of powers, a strong legislature, and a bill of rights. Article 1 established 

a secular regime with a capital at Damascus. In a concession to the Democrats, the 

congress agreed that the king must be Muslim. Other articles proclaimed freedom of 

belief and faith; the equality of all Syrians (regardless of religion) under the law; and 

freedoms of speech, press, and association—including opposition parties. The elected 

two-chambered legislature was to reserve one third of its seats for non-Muslims. Cabinet 

ministers were responsible to the legislature, not the king. Additional articles established judiciary independence. Against Democrats’ preference for strong citizens’ rights 

and a decentralized government, Faysal won a centralized bureaucracy and a commitment to expand state education.21

Most surprising, Progressives mustered majority support for women’s suffrage, 

despite the opposition’s noisy demonstrations outside their doors. However, the threat 

of European invasion, as in the past, once again curtailed the expansion of rights. 

Rida intervened to end the debate, arguing that the government could not afford to 

appear divided and weak when the French were poised to occupy Syria on the grounds 

that Faysal did not truly wield authority.22 With no time for further debate on individual articles, the congress ratified the constitution—with male suffrage only—

in early July 1920. 

The congress aimed to demonstrate that they did not need oversight by a League of 

Nations mandate, which was designed to tutor peoples in self-government. The French, 

however, were not persuaded by the logic of the mandate system. They insisted on 

imposing the mandate to demonstrate that they were a power equal to Britain in the 

Middle East; French troops consequently gathered at the Lebanese border of Syria in 

early July. 

In a last act to defend Arab sovereignty, Rida led a delegation to King Faysal on July 

19 urging him to reject France’s ultimatum to surrender or be occupied. Faysal denied 

their appeal to take up arms, but his telegram to French General Henri Gouraud went 

unanswered. Gouraud ordered his troops into Syria and in a single day defeated the 

Syrian-Arab army. In protest, Faysal invoked Wilson and the French Revolution: “This, 

my general, is a violation of the given word, and an act contrary to the rights of man 

and international morality.”23

Like Faysal, most Arabs regarded colonial occupation as a profound moral injustice. 

In response, they repudiated the authority of the League of Nations, which they had 

The constitution was the most 

democratic yet seen in the 

Middle East: It called for the 

separation of powers, a strong 

legislature, and a bill of rights. 


once seen as their protector, and resorted to force. In 1920, Syrian Arabs launched a 

revolt against France that would last through much of that decade. Iraqis staged their 

1920 revolution against the British mandate, which they still consider the crucible of 

their political unity as a nation. Egyptians, in the meantime, had mounted their 1919 

revolution when the British refused to permit their delegation to travel to Paris; Egyptian protests would force the British in 1922 to end their formal protectorate, but not 

their occupation. 

Across the Arab world, the British and French allied with wealthy landowners and 

tribal chiefs to staunch demands for democratic politics and independence. Bitter at 

the betrayal of their rights and universal, liberal standards of justice, most Arabs turned 

away from European tutelage and political models altogether. Support for Faysal disintegrated since he was now associated with the hypocritical usage of international law 

to further imperial aims. Rida used his widely read The Lighthouse to criticize Europe 

bitterly. “Nobody, anymore, believes the word of Europeans, nor does anybody trust 

them, or even perceive them to be qualified to exercise justice and virtue,” he wrote 

in 1920.24 

For Rida, this was a political about-face. In Damascus, he had called the constitutional monarchy an Islamic form of government. Now, he actively preached against 

the idea that Islam shared the same principles of justice with Christian Europe. In 

1922–23, he serialized a book called The Caliphate, which offered an Arab-Islamic model 

of government.25 True justice, he argued, lies in imitating the seventh-century Arab 

caliphate governed by successors to the Prophet Muhammad.26 Decades later, Rida’s 

arguments would inspire militant Islamic reformers like those in al-Qaeda to revive the 

Arab caliphate.

In the short term, Rida directly inspired Hasan al-Banna, who in 1928 founded 

Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood. The grandfather of all Arab-Islamist movements today, the 

brotherhood was not militant; it sought reform from within the political system and 

through public education. By the early 1940s, it had become the largest political movement in Egypt by attracting middle-class Egyptians who felt shut out of politics run by 

a Westernized elite. They embraced Banna’s call for cultural sovereignty in addition to 

political sovereignty. In dress, law, education, and social life, they wanted to replace 

European models with Islamic equivalents. 

Meanwhile, the British called Faysal from exile in Italy in 1921 after defeating the 

Iraqi revolution and installed him as king of Iraq. From his throne, Faysal watched as 

British forces built the most oppressive regime in the Arab world. The Iraqi constitution 

of 1925, like Egypt’s of 1923, was written by the British to safeguard their own interests 

through the royal court. In contrast to the 1920 Syrian constitution, it granted little 

power to the legislature or minorities. The British used rigged elections, land grants, 

tax exemptions, and feudal laws to create a loyal class of landowners with control over 

an increasingly landless peasant majority.27 As a consequence, the Communist Party 

became the most popular political movement in Iraq by the 1940s and 1950s. 

In Syria, meanwhile, nationalists looked across their border to independent Turkey, 

where Mustafa Kemal used the full power of the state to promote social reform and 

economic growth. The French mandate in Syria, by contrast, spent little on social 

development. Like the British in Egypt and Iraq, the French imposed a constitution that 

protected their power and used fixed elections and patronage to build a loyal class of 

landed elites. By the 1940s, mass political movements had emerged across the Arab 

world that promoted statist ideologies like Kemal’s in Turkey. Islamists, Communists, 

and Baathists offered variations on revolutionary visions to uproot the French, British, 

and their privileged elite. All of these movements posited a distinctively Eastern—Arab 

or Muslim—model of justice against Western liberalism. 

The new mass movements rejected European liberalism as inherently unjust and imperialist. But they did not reject the constitutional ideal. In this sense, they expressed a 

Bitter at the betrayal of their 

rights and universal, liberal 

standards of justice, most 

Arabs turned away from 

European tutelage and political 

models altogether. 
7

feeling of “justice interrupted” that foresaw a future restoration of constitutionalism 

once sovereignty was regained. Banna’s vision of an Islamic government retained the 

principles of representative government. He advocated a measured reform of Egypt’s 

1923 constitution to revise only those articles that directly contradicted modernist 

interpretations of Islamic law.28 The Baath Party in Syria viewed Islam as the cultural 

expression of both Muslim and Christian Arabs, whose society had predated the rise of 

the religion. In this way, Baathists sought a basis for equality between Muslims and 

Christians in the tolerant spirit of the 1920 constitution. The Iraqi Communist Party 

listed “a democratic order” with an elected parliament as its second priority, after the 

top priority of political and economic sovereignty.29

The Palestinians who had joined the 1920 Syrian-Arab General Congress, by contrast, 

failed utterly to build a sustained political response to the European betrayal of 1919. In 

the 1920s, Palestinians petitioned the British for the national right to self-determination to little effect. In 1936, the Palestinians turned to armed revolt. Syrian, Iraqi, and 

Egyptian Arabs joined that fight, as well as the Palestinian war against Israel in 1948. 

The United Nations’ inability, or unwillingness, to secure a state for Palestinians symbolized for all Arabs their exclusion from full and equal membership in the community 

of international law and human rights. Arab resentment over this injustice is the most 

enduring political legacy of 1919. 

Colonial inequality and its reinforcement during the Cold War would finally drive 

leaders to abandon constitutional government in the 1950s. Fear of the colonial elite’s 

tyranny pushed democratic movements underground and inspired military officers to 

stage coups in 1949 Syria, 1952 Egypt, and 1958 Iraq, where Fayal’s own grandson died. 

The Iraqi Free Officers proclaimed themselves as representatives of the popular will who 

would bring justice denied to Iraqis under the corrupt British-penned constitution. Their 

revolutionary manifesto stated, once again, the belief that sovereignty would restore 

justice: “We have undertaken to liberate the homeland from the corrupt crew that 

imperialism installed. Power shall be entrusted to a government emanating from you 

and inspired by you.”30 However, the revolutionary leader, Abdul Karim Qasim, was overthrown in the 1963 coup, which launched forty years of Baathist dictatorship in Iraq.

Similar tensions produced near civil war in 1958 Lebanon and Jordan, where conservative, colonial-era elites prevailed with U.S. support. Politics in Saudi Arabia and the 

Gulf followed a different trajectory, in part because Arabs there had participated little 

in constitutional government. With the blessings of the British, they founded monarchies with few constitutional constraints. During and after World War II, American 

leaders tacitly consented to British and French repression of democracy. While Arabs had 

praised Wilson and U.S. anticolonialism through the 1930s, American standing in the 

Middle East consequently plummeted in the wake of decolonization. 

The contrasting cases of Turkey and Iran, which escaped direct colonial rule, underscore the link between foreign occupation and the demise of constitutionalism as an 

ideal. After Mustafa Kemal’s death in 1938, Turks revived constitutional politics and 

in 1950 conducted the republic’s first true democratic election. Iranians, too, revived 

their 1906 constitution in the 1940s and again in the 1979 revolution against the Shah; 

the constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran combines elements of the French Fifth 

Republic with the religious authority of a Supreme Islamic Leader. Commitment to constitutionalism remained unbroken in these two countries, which are more democratic 

than their previously colonized Arab neighbors. 

$PODMVTJPO5IF6TFPG)JTUPSJDBM1SFDFEFOUJO641PMJDZ

The betrayal of 1919–20 remains a touchstone in Arab politics today. Memoirs and 

histories of the Faysal era are still popular in Damascus bookstores. The Syrian-Arab 

While Arabs had praised 

Wilson and U.S. anticolonialism 

through the 1930s, American 

standing in the Middle East 

consequently plummeted in 

the wake of decolonization. 
General Congress launched the modern era of Arab politics, a Syrian historian argued 

in 2000: “Its relevance continues today, in our need to return to it as a precedent for a 

society confronting itself and the world after a long period of negation under foreign 

occupation.”31 In Baghdad, too, Iraqis commonly recite with bitterness Gen. Stanley 

Maude’s broken promise of March 1917 that the British army came not “as conquerors 

or enemies, but as liberators.”32 Exactly eighty-six years later, President Bush used 

the same sentence, a Baghdadi reminded a Washington Post reporter on the eve of the 

American invasion.33

 Even Iraqis who supported the invasion urged Americans to withdraw quickly. “Fear 

of foreign intervention has been a central theme of Iraqi politics, literature and art ever 

since the country came into being after the First World War,” wrote Awad Nasir, an exiled 

Iraqi poet, in April 2003 to the National Review Online. “Rightly or wrongly, most Iraqis 

believe that their sufferings are, at least in part, a direct result of the support given by 

foreign powers to the various despots who seized and exercised power in Baghdad.” He 

and other Iraqis believed that their country’s strong middle class would support democratization without U.S. tutelage. In an eerie echo of Faysal’s plea in Paris, Nasir argued: 

“A democratic and prosperous Iraq under a government of its choosing could become 

[the] only true friend of the United States in the Arab world.”34 

While Nasir and his fellow Iraqi citizens revived the Wilsonian perspective of 1919, 

Americans remained tuned to the story of World War II. In May 2003, Coalition Provisional Authority head Paul Bremer preempted the quick transfer of power by following 

the World War II script of de-Nazification. After he disbanded the Iraqi army and purged 

the civilian bureaucracy of Baathists, there was virtually no state left to restore to Iraqi 

sovereignty. Bremer’s policy gave an opening to what Nasir had feared most: the intervention of neighboring powers and the revolt of indigenous opponents of democracy.35 

The Iraqi middle class, which was supposed to be the backbone of democracy, fled to 

exile under threat of insurgent attack. 

The 2005 Iraqi constitution was a “catastrophe,” wrote political scientist Nathan 

J. Brown, because it was imposed by a small group of high-minded politicians from 

above. It did not represent the reconciliation of opposing interests, nor did it prevent 

civil war.36 American guidance proved counterproductive. By 2005, most Iraqis viewed 

Americans as occupiers, not liberators, and, as one scholar put it, they “chafed at having 

to draft a constitution under U.S. supervision.”37 U.S. efforts at nation building in Iraq 

have resembled more the failure of the post–World War I mandates than the success of 

post–World War II Japan and Germany. 

Under a new administration, and with the withdrawal agreement ratified, U.S. policymakers must find an alternative to the World War II analogy; conditions are ripe for 

a paradigm shift.38 Understanding Arabs’ enduring sense of “justice interrupted” since 

World War I can help create a better policy in Iraq and the Middle East, one that would 

respect Arabs’ conviction that sovereignty is a prerequisite to justice. It would, as the 

Iraq Study Group recommended in 2006, create the space for democratic politics by 

using regional diplomacy to secure Iraq’s borders from destabilizing interference. Iraqis 

might then hammer out, as Arabs did in 1920 Damascus, a living constitution. 

The World War I precedent, however, warns that the United States cannot simply 

roll back the clock. The effects of British rule—notably the lack of experience with 

constitutional government and economic inequality—raised obstacles to democratic 

government that had not handicapped the Syrian-Arab Congress in 1920. By 2003, Iraq 

resembled other postcolonial countries with weak states and deep social divisions. As a 

consequence, simply reforming government institutions is unlikely to promote a stable 

democracy, warns political scientist David Waldner.39

What historians can tell foreign policymakers today is that the door not chosen in 

1919 is still partly open; that justice interrupted can be restored. Wilson’s vision of a 

world governed by international law survives in Arab memory as a promise yet to be 

8

U.S. efforts at nation building 

in Iraq have resembled more 

the failure of the post–World 

War I mandates than the 

success of post–World War II 

Japan and Germany. 
fulfilled. While the conditions of 1920 cannot be retrieved, Arabs’ memory of betrayal 

must be taken seriously—and can become the basis for a new approach to U.S. policy. 

Even Bush’s advisers recognized that Americans’ decision to imitate colonial practice 

in the Cold War—by buying the loyalty of dictators—had led to radical militarism, not 

stability. Indeed, Arab politicians still make the same demands for the rights denied 

them ninety years ago out of an enduring desire to be on equal terms in the international arena.40 Arab-Islamic movements, beneath their outward anti-Westernism, also 

retain Rida’s commitment to the constitutional principles of representation and equality 

before the law. American policymakers who recognize the power of this historical precedent can begin to restore the mutual respect and shared values of justice that Arabs 

and Americans enjoyed nearly a century ago.


10

/PUFT

1. Term adapted from Nancy Fraser, Justice Interruptus: Critical Reflections on the “Postsocialist” 

Condition (New York: Routledge, 1997).

2. Ernest R. May, “Lessons” of the Past (New York: Oxford, 1973); Yuen Foong Khong, Analogies at War 

(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992).

3. Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack (New York: Simon & Shuster, 2004), 86–87.

4. See: www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/03/20030317-7.html (accessed May 7, 2009).

5. Jeffrey K. Tulis, The Rhetorical Presidency (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1987).

6. Thomas Friedman, “Foreign Affairs: World War III,” New York Times, September 13, 2001.

7. Thomas Friedman, “The Chant Not Heard,” New York Times, November 30, 2003.

8. John W. Dower, “A Warning from History: Don’t Expect Democracy in Iraq,” Boston Review

(February/March 2003). See: www.bostonreview.net/BR28.1/dower.html (accessed May 7, 2009).

9. See, for example, Jeffrey Record, “The Use and Abuse of History: Munich, Vietnam, and Iraq,” 

Survival 49:1 (Spring 2007): 163–80; Evan Thomas, “The Mythology of Munich,” Newsweek, June 

14, 2008.

10. Eliezer Tauber, “Rashid Rida’s Political Attitudes during World War I,” The Muslim World 85:1–2 

(January–April 1995): 118.

11. Peter Sluglett, Britain in Iraq 1914–1932 (London: Ithaca Press, 1976), 19; David Fromkin, A Peace 

to End All Peace (New York: Henry Holt, 1989), 306

12. See The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, Vol. 54: January 11–February 7, 1919, Arthur S. Link, ed. 

(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986), 265–68, 293–94, 303–30, and 350–61. On 

Wilson’s progressive internationalism, see Thomas J. Knock, To End All Wars (Princeton, N.J.: 

Princeton University Press, 1992), 31–47 and 210–36.

13. The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, Vol. 54, 505–09.

14. Knock, 225.

15. Malcolm B. Russell The First Modern Arab State: Syria under Faysal, 1918–1920 (Minneapolis: 

Biblioteca Islamica, 1985), 61–63, says 85 were elected and 35 were appointed. Mari Almaz 

Shahristan, al-Mu’tamar al-Suri al-‘Amm 1919–20 (Beirut: Dar al-Amwaj, 2000), 37–42, says sources 

range from 89 to 107 elected delegates. 

16. Harry N. Howard, The King-Crane Commission (Beirut: Khayat’s, 1963), 228, 108, and 235–36.

17. Tauber, “Rashid Rida’s Political Attitudes during World War I,” 119.

18. James L. Gelvin, Divided Loyalties: Nationalism and Mass Politics in Syria at the Close of Empire

(Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1998), 247–52.

19. Eliezer Tauber, “Rashid Rida and Faysal’s Kingdom in Syria,” The Muslim World 85:3–4 (July–October 

1995): 241.

20. Shahristan, 179–94. Text: Jama’at al-Duwal al-‘Arabiyya, Disatir al-Bilad al-‘Arabiyya (1955), 

3–22.

21. Russell, 149. 

22. Gelvin, 188–215; Elizabeth Thompson, Colonial Citizens (New York: Columbia University Press, 

2000), 117–20; Shahristan, 194–208 (especially Rida’s comments, 205–06).

23. Russell, 187.

24. Emad Eldin Shahin, “Muhammad Rashid Rida’s Perspectives on the West as Reflected in al-Manar,” 

The Muslim World 79:2 (1989): 129. Shahin cites the source of the quote as al-Manar XXII (1920), 

398.

25. Mahmoud Haddad, “Arab Religious Nationalism in the Colonial Era: Rereading Rashid Rida’s Ideas 

on the Caliphate,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 117:2 (April–June 1997): 253–77.

26. Al-Shaykh Muhammad Rashid Rida, Al-Khalifa (Cairo: al-Zahra’ al-I’lam al-‘Arabi, 1988), 6.

27. Charles Tripp, A History of Iraq (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 30–147; Samira Haj, 

The Making of Iraq 1900–63 (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1997), 1–109.

28. Hasan al-Banna, Mudhakkirat al-Da’wah wa al-Da’iyah (Beirut: Maktabat al-Islami, 1974), 259–60 

and “Risalat al-Mu’tamar al-Khamis” in Majmu’at Risa’il al-Imam al-Shahid Hasan al-Banna (Beirut: 

Dar al-Andalus, 1965), 274–79. See also Ahmad S. Moussalli, “Hasan al-Banna’s Islamist Discourse 

on Constitutional Rule and the Islamic State,” Journal of Islamic Studies 4:2 (1993): 161–74.

29. “A Free Homeland and a Happy People,” translation of April 1945 booklet, Baghdad Legation to 

State Department, Washington, Dispatch 783, June 21, 1945.

30. Hanna Batatu, The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq (Princeton, N.J.: 

Princeton University Press, 1978), 802. Batatu also gives a good summary of Baathist ideology 

in the 1950s, 730–48, and of Baathists’ loss of Shiite support and greater reliance on the 

military after 1968, 1073–1110. See also John F. Devlin, The Baath Party (Stanford, Calif.: Hoover 

Institution Press, 1976), 1–5, 23–42, 119–20 and Gelvin, 287–97.

31. Shahristan, 214. See also Khariyya Qasimiyya, al-Hukuma al-‘Arabiya fi Dimashq bayna 1918–20 

(Beirut: Mu’assassat al-‘Arabiyya lil-Dirasat wa al-Nashr, 1982); Muhammad M. Arna’ut, Dirasat 
11

Hawla al-Hukuma /al-Dawla al-’Arabiya fi Dimashq 1918–20 (Amman: Dar al-Shuruq lil-Nashr wa 

Tawzi’, 2000), 63–70; Abdul-Karim Rafeq, Tarikh al-Jami’ah al-Suriyyah (Damascus: Maktabat Nubil, 

2004).

32. See: wwi.lib.byu.edu/index.php/The_Proclamation_of_Baghdad (accessed May 7, 2009). On British 

lack of planning, parallel to the Americans’ in 2003, see also Fromkin, 306; Sluglett, 9–18; and 

Tripp, 30–39.

33. Anthony Shadid, Night Draws Near (New York: Henry Holt, 2005), 17. Bush’s ultimatum to Saddam 

on March 17, 2003, was translated and broadcast in Iraq. It mentioned the words “liberty,” 

“liberation,” “free,” and “freedom” in relation to Iraq eight times. (See URL cited above.) 

Bush’s March 19, 2003, speech, made upon the invasion of Iraq, said: “We have no ambition 

in Iraq, except to remove a threat and restore control of that country to its own people.” 

See: georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2003/03/20030319-17.html 

(accessed May 7, 2009).

34. Awad Nasir, “Our Choosing,” National Review Online (April 7, 2003). See: www.nationalreview.com/

comment/comment-nasir040703.asp (accessed May 7, 2009). 

35. Awad Nasir, “Thank You: An Iraqi Poet Celebrates the Dictator’s Fall,” The Wall Street Journal (May 

8, 2003). See: www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110003465 (accessed May 7, 2009).

36. Nathan J. Brown, “Reason, Interest, Rationality, and Passion in Constitution Drafting,” Perspectives 

on Politics 6:4 (December 2008): 675–89.

37. Ann Elizabeth Mayer, “The Fatal Flaws in the U.S. Constitutional Project for Iraq,” Journal of 

International Affairs 61:1 (Fall/Winter 2007): 153–70.

38. See Jeffrey W. Legro, “Whence American Internationalism,” International Organization 54:2 (Spring 

2000): 253–89.

39. Brown, 675–89; David Waldner, “The Limits of Institutional Engineering: Lessons From Iraq,” USIP

Special Report 222 (May 2009); Mayer, 153–70.

40. On the need for more diplomatic history using Arabic sources, see Nathan J. Citino, “Out of the 

Blue? Historical Scholarship on U.S. Foreign Policy in the Middle East,” OAH Magazine of History 

(May 2006): 8–12.
6OJUFE4UBUFT

*OTUJUVUFPG1FBDF

1200 17th Street NW

Washington, DC 20036

XXXVTJQPSH

An online edition of this and related 

reports can be found on our Web site 

(www.usip.org), together with additional 

information on the subject.

0G3FMBUFE*OUFSFTU

t The Limits of Institutional Engineering: Lessons from Iraq by David Waldner (Special 

Report, May 2009)

t Land, Property, and the Challenge of Return for Iraq’s Displaced by Deborah Isser and 

Peter Van der Auweraert (Special Report, April 2009)

t Iraq, its Neighbors, and the Obama Administration: Syrian and Saudi Perspectives by 

the Iraq and its Neighbors initiative (Working Paper, February 2009)

t The Treasury Approach to State-Building and Institution-Strengthening Assistance: Experience in Iraq and Broader Implications by Jeremiah S. Pam (Special Report, October 2008)

t Reconciliation Strategies in Iraq by David A. Steele (Special Report, October 2008)

t Political Progress in Iraq during the Surge, by Rend Al-Rahim Francke (Special Report, 

August 2007) 

t Iraq’s New Political Map by Phebe Marr (Special Report, January 2007)