Etyfreak, the fact that Napoleon quickly defeated the existing government (using new and superior techniques) is hardly a break in the analogy.

Juan Cole wrote:

"The French landed at the port of Alexandria on July 1, 1798. Two and a half weeks later, as the French army advanced along the Nile toward Cairo, a unit of Gen. Jean Reynier's division met opposition from 1,800 villagers, many armed with muskets. Sgt. Charles Francois recalled a typical scene. After scaling the village walls and "firing into those crowds," killing "about 900 men," the French confiscated the villagers' livestock -- "camels, donkeys, horses, eggs, cows, sheep" -- then "finished burning the rest of the houses, or rather the huts, so as to provide a terrible object lesson to these half-savage and barbarous people."

On July 24, Bonaparte's Army of the Orient entered Cairo and he began reorganizing his new subjects."

Thanks for the great history lesson. You forgot the best part. On July 21st, Napoleon beat the Mamluk army in the battle of the pyramids. That's right, a bunch of dirty french peasants defeated the cream of ottoman society, revolutionizing warfare forever (square formation against cavalry). The Mamluks fled to Syria, leaving a power vaccuum, and Napoleon tried to reorganize Egypt, but was stymied by Nelson's victory 10 days later. So those "massacres" and "object lessons" are really skirmishes before the big battle. Maybe you should try presenting history as it happened rather than using a spurious analogy to score political points.

All analogies have limits, but this one is severely limited.

Thank you for the compliment. Cheers!

I can't believe I'm the first to comment on the exquisite irony of comparing Bush's failures to those of a French general. After the disgusting, idiotic spectacle of France-bashing in this country after Chirac offered us sensible warnings about the danger of the Iraq folly and refused to jump off the cliff with us, they've earned the last laugh. This is just magnifique.

The parallels are important in this article, but an even more instructive study could be done on the misadvanture of Napoleon III.

The attack on a country that had not attacked France, stimulated by media hysteria, with no concept of the consequences is what happened in the late summer of 1870.

European historians trace the consequences directly to World War I, which then led to Communism, World War II, Hitler, The Cold War, Korea, Vietnam and the Yugoslavia breakup.

In short, the Franco-Prussian War took about 120 years to resolve. I believe that the rearrangement of geopolitical forces unleashed in 2003 will similarly take at least that long to be stabilized. Napoleon III showed us how one foolish leader with a political name can do such long lasting damage.

At least Napoleon's invasionary force included hundreds of scientists,scholars,artists engravers and so on whose research and work on Egypt would lead to the publication of the multi-volume encyclopedia 'Description de L'Egypte', helping lay the foundations of Egyptology. In 1798 the French founded the Institute of Egypt in Cairo equipped with laboratories, library, collections of objets, etc. There was a thirst for knowledge about the country.

Whereas in Iraq the coalition has showed little interest in knowing or understanding the culture and society of Iraq either before or since the invasion. On the contrary; it has led to its further disruption and destruction and ushered in an era of incredible barbarity, where the most violent and gruesome elements are able hold sway. War on terror? Cradle, nursery and university of terror more like.

Before March 2003, Bush and Blair both arrogantly dismissed scholars in their respective countries with deep knowledge of Iraq, deaf to their warnings about the catastrophe that could follow an invasion. They listened only to those who reinforced their already-made decision and flatttered their egos. Their simplistic theories about the democratisation of the M East that would follow an invasion were deluded. In contrast to the Napoleonic invasion, which whatever its follies did at least enrich human knowledge and scholarship, the invasion has helped destroy what Saddam's regime and sanctions had not in terms of culture and heritage. Iraq, the crucible of civilisation, has been laid waste. In the immediate aftermath of the invasion, coalition forces did nothing to halt the large-scale looting and destruction of museums and archives. The archaeological sites of Babylon and elsewhere have been badly damaged as a result of US bases and other actions. Many other priceless sites are being wrecked irretrievably by a combination of coalition damage and neglect, massive and systematic and unimpeded looting, and the general lawlessness and lack of security. The Defense Department had the gall to issue some weeks ago packs of playing cards to troops in Iraq with hints on how not to damage archaological and religious sites - four years too late! Many Iraqi academics have been assassinated, kidnapped or terrorised since the invasion. There is a huge brain drain (quite apart from those brains that have literally poured down drains) from Iraq. Iraqi women, who once enjoyed a relatively free and priveleged position compared with women in most of the rest of the M East, and had high rates of employment, are leading wretched lives. Widowed, forced to cover up in black in public, uanble to work, having in some cases to turn to prostitution.

And the US and Britain are closing their doors on those whose lives they have wrecked, even those who compromised themeslves fatally by working with them as translators, cleaners etc. often in the belief, in the early days of the invasion at least, that the coalition was bringing something better. They are letting them rot in hell.

The security and other implications of this Bush and Blair misadventure are horrendous with lasting ramifications throughout the Middle East and the world. And it is not as if there were not many examples of modern historical adventures gone wrong that should have deterred them from the reckless invasion and their subsequent behaviour.

Trying to compare Bush's misadventure in Iraq with Napoleon's misadventure in Egypt is just wrong; the only thing Bush has in common with Napoleon is a set of male genitalia.