No Peace and No Democracy: Two Occupations Ending in Hopeless Disasters

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/gary-leupp/56399/no-peace-and-no-democracy-two-occupations-ending-in-hopeless-disasters

No Peace and No Democracy: Two Occupations Ending in Hopeless Disasters
by Gary Leupp | June 14, 2014 - 10:07am

U.S. military occupations typically have two aspects, which are, at least theoretically, destructive and productive respectively. The classic U.S. occupation—the one held up as the model by those urging more—was that of Japan, from 1945 to 1952. Its two main missions were “demilitarization” following defeat in war and “democratization.” The latter meant the acceptance of a U.S.-dictated new constitution and at least the appearance of popular rule, and general incorporation into the U.S.-led imperialist camp.

Before and during the occupation of Iraq beginning in 2003, some neocons and President Bush himself offered this supposedly grand success story as the template for that project. (John Dower, a leading scholar on the Japanese occupation, pointed out from before the war the absurdity of assuming that the course of events in an advanced, industrialized country of ethnically homogeneous people could be replicated in a developing, ethnically and religiously divided society like Iraq. Bush, he argued, was misusing historical analogy for propaganda’s sake.)

The U.S. formally ended its occupation of Japan, while maintaining a vast military presence, in 1952. The economy, largely due to U.S. military special procurements, had finally revived to the 1937 level during the Korean War, then grown to 150% of that level by 1952. There was stability; labor demonstrations and protests against U.S. bases were common and sometimes violent, but there was nothing remotely resembling civil war. It surely was a success story, from Washington’s point of view, if not necessarily from the point of view of the Japanese obliged to forego neutrality in the Cold War.

Witness now, eleven years after the Iraq invasion, two and half years of the Pentagon’s sulky withdrawal, the fruits of that imperial project. Where is the demilitarization, the pacification, the law and order? Where is the “democracy,” or even any credible claim to central authority?