Nonetheless, on April 8, 1867, during a discussion at the Royal Geographical Society in London, Sir Henry Rawlinson rose to enthusiastically dub Mesopotamia the “Cradle of Civilization,” largely because the region became a commanding commercial center and crossroads. This commercial attraction only raised the stakes for centuries of invasion, conquest and subjugation of its citizens.

As a result, civilization in Iraq had been stopped in its infancy. It had never matured. Instead, it became a mere cradle fit for robbery and abuse by the greatest forces in history: by the most murderous barbarians, by the most powerful nations, by the greediest corporations, by the onslaught of progress that sprang from its midst and took root elsewhere, continents away, and by the ravages of cultural self-wounding that ensured Iraq would remain a prisoner of its own heritage.

Indeed, for nearly 7,000 years, Iraq has been shackled to unspeakable violence, toppled pride, cruel despotic authorities, and an utter lack of self-governance. The unbreachable continuum of its legacy inculcated bitter alienation as a birthright. Rather than becoming an intersection of the most splendid and accomplished, as ancient European civilizations ultimately became, Iraq has become a crossroads of conquest and conflict.

Through it all, the people of Mesopotamia have displayed an irrepressible ability to victimize their victimizers—real or perceived--in a never-ending cycle of violence. For hundreds of years reaching into the twentieth century, even when the ruthless Ottoman Empire ruled the three ethnically diverse provinces of Mesopotamia — Mosul, Baghdad and Basr­a – it did so only from afar and even then only nominally. In the twentieth century alone, no group has been exempt from mass murder and/or mass oppression: Armenians, Assyrians, Baha’is, Chaldeans, Jews, Kurds, Shiites, Sunnis—all of them have felt the sting of Iraq’s uncivilized impulses.

During that tempestuous twentieth century in Iraq, the region has offered only one attraction to the Western powers: oil. It has been a fatal attraction, one that has lured the Europeans, and later the Americans, deep into this troubled and tortured land.

Given Its History, Can We Succeed in Iraq?