Some Numbers

It's educational to look back at the British experience in Mesopotamia. Following an initially successful invasion (yes, oil was a factor), then a rout (surrender to the Turks at Kut) in 1916, British forces — mostly Indian troops — reached a maximum strength of about 400,000 [PDF] a few years later. Which made me wonder about numbers. In 1920 the population of Iraq was about three million. Today it's about thirty million. Relative to today's population the Brits would have had about four million soldiers! US troop strength today is roughly 150,000 (mercenaries vaguely add something). The British, of course, lost Iraq. So, then, what makes us think that with more than twenty times fewer people things will turn out differently for us? (Related to all this, the story of Gertrude Bell, btw, is quite interesting.)