50 years ago and what have we learned?

..and so we invented a pretext and then launched an invasion force of an arab country in defence of western economic interests with the object of securing 'regime change'. While the military did everything that could be asked of them, the whole venture failed because the politicians had not worked out an end game, and it ended in ignominy and disaster.

Ring any bells? No its not Iraq, but this week is the 50th anniversary of the attempt by the British and French to invade the Suez Canal, to remove President Nasser and his regime from office and replace it with an Egyptian Government both sympathetic to British and French economic interests and one which would be more sympathetic to the then new State of Israel.



Following a secret meeting at Sevres, just outside Paris, between France, Britain and Israel, the Israelis, deliberately used as the trigger, invaded the Gaza Strip and headed towards the Suez Canal, 'forcing' Britain and France to invade to keep the two warring sides apart.

The strategy worked wonderfully but the fly in the ointment in terms of a political success for the invaders was - a Republican Administration in the United States under Eisenhower, who threatened to sell US reserves of the British pound in order to cause a collapse of the British economy if Britain refused to withdraw. So after such irresistible pressure, the British and French withdrew, the Canal stayed in Egyptian hands and Nasser remained in power to celebrate his 'victory'.





The invasion was an appalling political misjudgment by Eden, the British Prime Minister, forcing his resignation as a result of the humiliation suffered as a result of his failure to deliver. It would have been a military and political triumph had it not been for the fiscal might of the United States which had firmly opposed the invasion.



It makes one think, fifty years on, what a pity it is that the United States is so economically omnipotent that no fiscal overlord is around to stop THEIR current, and far less able, Republican Administration from disastrous and immoral adventuring into Arab lands, hell bent on regime change.