If the United States and its allies had consulted history books before invading Iraq just over a year ago, they might have had second thoughts. Iraqis do not take foreign occupation lightly, as the blood-spattered accounts attest.
Most telling is the British war cemetery in Baghdad known as North Gate.
Row upon row of graves - more than 3,000, mostly unidentified - mark the last resting places of invading soldiers killed during more than four decades of occupation from 1914.
That, according to historians, is the tip of the human cost of Britain's attempts to militarily hold on to the region once known as Mesopotamia as part of its empire. Tens of thousands of civilians died fighting to oust the occupiers, sometimes in aerial bombings and mustard gas attacks.
Such methods of warfare are now outlawed by the Geneva Conventions, but invasion of another country is not, as the United States-led occupation proves. Neither have Iraqis altered their desire to determine their own future.
The point is not lost on historians and defence analysts, who are not surprised at the mounting toll of coalition soldiers. More than 800 have so far been killed - more than three-quarters of them since US President George W. Bush declared the war over on May 1.