Historians: modern Iraq is no postwar Germany

more: http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?sf=2813&click_id=2813&art_id=iol1068101125208U262&set_id=6

Washington - The United States government has drawn parallels between post-Saddam Hussein Iraq and Germany after World War II, a view historians see as just too audacious from economic, social and political standpoints.

At the end of September, faced with increasing public pressure against the US mission in Iraq, President George Bush said America had "done this kind of work before.

"Following World War II, we lifted up the defeated nations of Japan and Germany and stood with them as they built representative governments," Bush said in his September 27 address to the nation.

A number of historians beg to differ.

"The historical settings and the international and local and cultural peculiarities are so different in our two cases ... that even the most imaginative and daring historians would think twice about taking on such a comparative project," believes Christof Mauch of the German Historical Institute in Washington.

"Circumstances in the current situation are so different," Mauch told an audience at a symposium Monday in the US federal capital, held jointly by the institute and the Friedrich-Ebert Foundation.

The US administration appears to proffer such comparisons between Iraq and Germany in order to justify the United States' huge economic and military engagement in Iraq.
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Great article and rebutt to the RW drivel being thrown about.

http://www.realisticforeignpolicy.org/archives/000014.php#000014

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by Erin Solaro

Many people compare reconstruction in post-war Iraq to the post-war reconstruction of Germany and Japan. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice is only the most vocal proponent of the idea that we were going to liberate the Iraqis the way we liberated the Axis peoples, especially the Germans, from their own tyranny.

Would we had liberated Germany and Japan! Instead, we invaded, conquered them, and then we occupied them. The human costs were unbelievable: approximately 3.5 million German soldiers, and 780,000 civilians, killed. The death toll was nearly as great in Asia with an estimated 1.3 million Japanese soldiers, and 672,000 civilians, killed. The prewar German population was 80.6 million; that of Japan in 1940 was just over 73 million. Germany was ground like grain between two great armies that fought through its cities street-by-street and sometimes house-by-house. Japan’s wood and paper cities were attacked with incendiary bombs to cause firestorms because it made a lot of sense to kill skilled workers.

The Allies insisted on unconditional surrender by the legitimate German and Japanese authorities. This demand forced all who thought the Nazi and Imperial orders were worth defending to fight, and often die, for their beliefs.

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I prefer this coalition of foreign policy experts over the Center for American Progress. Maybe it's because I am waiting for more policy initiatives out of the new left of center think tank.

Communism, the great fear of America, Nazi Germany and imperial Japan. Unlike the US where the Communist were not a serious factor, the Communists in both Japan and Germany were in a position to take over if anyone let them do so (they did so in East Germany for example). Communists had fought the Nazis in the early 1930s and then went into hiding under the threat of Nazi concentration camps. In Japan opposition to the War party were killed by right wing death squads which caused the Japanese Communist party to go underground.

While both parties were underground, both had a committed party following that could spring into action and take over the Government if permitted. This was the last thing the US wanted for either Germany or Japan, and the former rulers of Germany and Japan also did not want the Communist to take over. Thus both sides worked together for they knew if they did not the Communists would take advantage of the discord and take over (or this was the FEAR of both sides).

Thus the ruling cliques of Japan and Germany had good reasons to cooperate with the US even before the start of the Cold War. Hitler upon receiving a captured Copy of the Allied plan of occupation commented that it would lead to war between the US and the USSR, thus the German leadership knew, even before the complete fall of the Nazis, of the coming conflict between the US and the USSR and plan to exploit the coming conflict to their advantage. I have not seen any such comments from Japanese WWII leaders but the thinking was the same, better an American occupation, than rule by Communists.

As to why the Communists did not revolt against the US, the Nazi (and the Japanese ruling clique in Japan) had ruthlessly suppressed the Communists in the 1930s and during WWII, thus the Communists were not in a position to challenge the American occupation at the end of WWII (Stalin's purges and attempts to dominate world wide Communism during the late 1930s were equally effective at weakening the Communist parties in Western Europe).

Thus the right wing in Japan and Germany feared resistence against the Americans more than the American did. With the Communists not yet recovered from Stalin's purges the left could not revolt either.

The situation in Iraq is completely different. Saddam may dislike Islamic fundamentalism, he has used it in the past to help control his population. Fundamentalism is thus a ready tool for revolt. The Baathist party is a right wing socialist party and thus a ready tool for revolt. No one in Iraq really fears a revolt, everyone (Except the Americans) think they will benefit as the result of a successful revolt, thus the revolt is occurring and will occur till we leave and the natives can work out some sort of social compact among themselves.

the two worst US mistakes have been the "ejection" of the Baas party members from the civilian services and the break-up of the Iraqi army. These mistakes wasn't made after the WWII in Germany.