Quote Originally Posted by FascistLibertarian View Post
I do not think the comparions of Sadam's Iraq to Hitler's Germany is a very good one. Working with the Germans and Japanese after WWII (where they were soundly beaten after a long extreme fight) was a major reason for the lack of chaos. In Japan the head was kept and in Germany they cut off the head and kept the body. In Hungry many Arrow Cross members joined the Communists in '45. The US could have had many people join their side at the beginning. Bremer and Rumsfeld fumbled the ball and others are paying for it now.

I agree he sounds like he is trying to justify a bad policy. I wonder how much Bremer had studied his own country's occupation of Germany and Japan?
Hear, hear!

There's a pretty good book called What We Owe Iraq by a guy called Noah Feldman, a law professor who worked at CPA in 2003. He recounts that while flying to Iraq, many of the CPA civilians were reading books on the Marshall Plan and US post-war occupation in Germany and Japan rather than reading about the Shiites or any other Iraq-related material. What did the occupation authorities read when they got assigned to the military governments in Japan and Germany? What prepared them to do as well as they did? I think the answer is that they well understood the cultures of Japan and Germany - think of MacArthur keeping the Emperor around.

The fact that we focus so much on our own experience (which is obviously better than not focusing on any experience) rather than than the culture in which we will operate is critical. Furthermore, to maximize success we need this knowledge before undertaking an operation, not during or after.

By the way, the book does a good job of spelling out the moral imperative for the US to stay in Iraq until stability is restored. It carries out the kind of discussion we should be having Nationally, rather then the simplified "in or out" pissing match that seems to be going on in Washington these days.