TOBY DODGE wrote Inventing Iraq to advise the U.S. on how to run an occupation. Dodge, a senior research fellow at Britain’s University of Warwick and a consultant for ABC News, examines the British occupation of Iraq from 1914 to 1932 as an example of failure–in hopes that the current U.S. occupation can "succeed."

After the First World War, Britain’s wartime seizure of Iraq was legalized under the Mandate system of the League of Nations. Britain’s interests included dominating the Persian Gulf and "protecting" its oil fields, as well as "maintaining Baghdad as a key link to the imperial air route to India." These "economic and strategic interests," as well as Dodge’s own exposure of the racism, greed, and stupidity of British rule, seriously undercut Dodge’s claim that the occupiers had the best interests of Iraqis in mind.

Dodge argues that the British ultimately failed because they didn’t understand Iraqi society. He admits that this is a problem for the U.S., too, but he still pins his hopes on the U.S., which is "clearly the unchallenged hegemon whose power cannot and should not be rivaled." He never seems to waiver from the faith of the modern liberal that if we could just find the proper formula for imposing a government upon an unwilling and unworthy populace, their natural resources would be in the right hands and everyone’s life would be better.

Much of the book is devoted to ridiculous analyses of sociological theories of how to establish order and punish resistance in an occupied population while plundering its major resource. Nevertheless, the many similarities between the British occupation and the current U.S. fiasco can be informative.

The British hoped to meet the Mandate requirement for establishing a "liberal democracy" by installing leaders that they could control from behind the scenes. In fact, the British High Commissioner’s first move to bring democracy to Iraq was to install a monarchy. King Faisal came from Syria with several of his henchmen to rule the new nation. He was popular with the people and "appeared open to British manipulation." A British-appointed Council of Ministers was given limited authority. As with the U.S.-imposed Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, handing over real power to the people was never a serious option.

Even so, Britain’s "hope that Faisal would reign and not rule," writes Dodge, "soon proved naïve." Faisal’s straining at British controls on his power and an increasingly threatening nationalist movement in Baghdad led Britain to abandon the Mandate for a formal treaty with Iraq. But the switch did little to ease anti-occupation sentiment.

The British secured their presence by dividing the elites of town and country against each other. In the countryside, they subsidized a ruling elite of rural sheikhs to guarantee order among the "simple tribesman" whom the British saw as "driven by unchained passions." The British regarded the reactionary sheikhs as "moderates"–and favored them against the lawyers and politicians in Baghdad whom they feared for their capacity for revolt.

After the devastating costs of the First World War, British imperial projects were strapped for cash. In addition, British taxpayers on the homefront were weary of warfare and the expense of occupations. So the British established a system of landownership in order to allow the sheikhs to collect taxes. Sheikhs who failed to control their populations or to collect the required taxes were replaced or otherwise punished. This could include collective punishment of the entire tribe for the actions of an individual.

A major revolt in 1920 against the "heavy-handed approach of the occupation" took six months, many lives, and great cost to put down. Demands to end the occupation increased. At this point, according to Dodge, the occupying powers began to concentrate on ending the occupation at the expense of nation building.

Winston Churchill came up with a plan for substituting air power for "costly imperial troops," which he hoped would end criticism at home and save the occupation. Air power was billed as "an explicitly moral instrument of social control" to be used against the "semi-civilized." As with the U.S. bombing campaign at the beginning of the latest Iraq war, the public was told the lie that modern air battle technology would result in few, if any, human casualties.

The first air attack, against the villages of two recalcitrant sheikhs, made "apparent to tribes in a wide area…the new might and reach of the state." In the process, some 100 men, women, and children were killed, and six villages and much livestock were destroyed. The results, says Dodge, "had to be hidden from the British public." As with the even more bloody collective punishment in Fallujah earlier this year, the aim was to let every Iraqi know how murderous the occupiers could be while hiding the same news from people at home.

In the concluding chapter, Dodge speaks directly to L. Paul Bremer, then-viceroy of the American occupation. Dodge urges Bremer to discover the "‘essence’ of Iraq." According to Dodge, better planning, better security, and especially more troops will be necessary to get the job done "right." So, voilà–the Kerry plan!

Dodge’s history can teach us important lessons if we cut through the pro-imperial message he intended. The parallels between the two occupations show in detail how a military power bent on controlling another nation in order to exploit its resources has nothing but misery to offer its people.