Jack Weatherford: Great Law of Genghis Khan in Iraq

Los Angeles Times, 2006 December 29

“In his final televised speech to the Iraqi people in 2003, Saddam Hussein denounced the invading Americans as ‘the Mongols of this age,’ a reference to the last time infidels had conquered his country, in 1258. But the comparison isn't very apt — unlike the Mongols, the Americans don't have the organizational genius of Genghis Khan...

“The legal justification for the Mongol invasion of Iraq derived from the reluctance of the caliph of Baghdad to control the Shiite Cult of the Assassins, whom the Mongols accused of attempting to kill their khan.

“The Assassins operated from a series of fortified mountain camps spread from contemporary Afghanistan to Iraq, and the Baghdad invasion did not begin until the Mongols had eradicated the threat from the Assassins and destroyed their fortresses...

“The Mongols took no prisoners and allowed no torture, but they executed swiftly and efficiently, including the soldiers of the defeated army who, they believed, would be a constant source of future problems if allowed to live. The first several months of a Mongol invasion were bloody, but once the takeover ended, the bloodshed ended.

“By contrast, the American military campaign was quick, with comparatively few Iraqi (or coalition) casualties, but the bloodshed has continued for years...

“And while the violence continues, the U.S. can't come close to establishing a government that rivals what the Mongols achieved...

“They fiercely enforced religious freedom, which created an essentially secular state... They lowered taxes for merchants and eliminated them for religious, medical and educational professionals. They educated women along with men...

“Fundamentalist Muslims look back at Mongol secularism as a scourge. But, although U.S. rule in Iraq has produced a constant flow of refugees, particularly religious minorities, out of the country, under Mongol rule Christian, Muslim, Jewish and even Buddhist immigrants poured into the newly conquered Iraq to live under the Great Law of Genghis Khan...

“By the time of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the political achievements of the Mongols had been forgotten, and only the destructive fury of their wars was remembered.”

-Jack Weatherford