Iraq and a test for intellectual honesty

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The romantisiation of the liberation of europe is something I find inadequate. Look at it the way it was.

My granny once was targeted by silver fighterbombers (US aircraft that is) when cycling with my infant mom from one village to another on a street. That was intentional targeting of a civilian, flying at low altitude the pilots exactly saw what they were firing on, a war crime. And that was commonplace in these days.
When she was about to give birth to my uncle she had to be evacuated to the bunker because of another air raid.
I remember talk from her like "Oh yes, that was a bad day, there was another air raid, and afterwards uncle Jakob was lying on the roof, deheaded, and my uncle Paul's family was entombed in their cellar and we heared them praying and crying through the rubble, and lacking heavy mashinery we couldn't help them, until it stopped after 5 days. There were many casualties that day."
That is how the process of liberation in real life looked for ordinary Germans. No need to romanticise it. And tell me what you want - the liberation of Iraq can't be that different for the Iraqis.

So I can understand people disliking even the western allies. One who had seen Dresden or Hamburg burn, or had lost relatives thanks to allied fighterbomber strafing or bombings in general hardly can have felt much love for them, despite the extensive, indispensable and honest help they provided afterwards, that being a point to be grateful for.

Ironically, in East Germany the German nazi resistance against the soviets was later sponsored by the allies, it was the time of the cold war. However, it IMO is an exaggerated episode - the people were utterly fed up with war - it didn't have a serious impact, and if it had it was kept strictly secret in order to enforce the de-nazification.

 

I agree with Ragusa on the romantisation of the Europe liberation. My dad is a german, and his mother lived during WWII. She was a jew, so were her family, but that didn't stop them from being killed by allied "liberators." Their house in berlin was bombed, and it wasn't close to any factory or enemy stronghold. A large group of her male relatives that managed to leave the city with some women were shot for "joining with the nazis", yeah right!! They even carried their passports and wore the stars that they were forced to, easy to recognize them as nazis, isn't it?

 

Also agree - I have German relatives who'd be more than happy to set you straight on the "liberation".

 

...?!? Again, I am reduced to question marks. Imperial Japan didn't have any significant democratic history prior to its resurrection - the main interwar political argument was whether to stick with zealous Shintoism or mutate into full-fledged fascism. And "only a 15 year dark age"...ONLY?!? Yeah, thank goodness industrial Nazism "only" had fifteen years. That was still enough time to throttle German culture, poison an entire generation, manage millions of deaths, and wreak global devastation. Frankly, I think the real naivete was the Allied idea that Germany could be denazified in a decade - my money would've been on two generations.

Please understand that I am not bashing Japan or Germany, but only to point out that with a li'l care and attention, and once freed from the megalomaniacs that hijacked their governments, their peoples proved themselves quite peaceful and democratic. But it occurred by decree and over the barrel of a gun.

There's no denying how hard the Germans and Japanese worked to reconstruct their country, in partnership with the US. There's also no denying that American companies ruthlessly exploited the opportunity to lock in markets and flood Europe with their excess produce, giving Europe their own taste of neo-colonial economics. Recall France's bitter resentment of the Marshall Plan for that very reason - and why the Soviets refused such strings-attached money.

You're totally right, Ragusa - we all worked together for mutual profit. But mutual profit is not inconsistent with using American companies - nor is it incompatible with pouring tens of billions of dollars into Iraqi infrastructure which, by geographic necessity, will benefit Iraqis far more than Americans.

A question: Given the level of corruption in the former Iraqi government, would it have been wiser, or kinder, or more productive to hand blank checks to any self-proclaimed Iraqi bureaucrat?

The romanticisation of the liberation of Germany is often not merely inadequate, but deceptive. Why use the euphemism of "disliking" - why not "hating"? You present an excellent anecdote, Ragusa, of the horrors of war from the other side. But even a people with a legitimate resentment and bitterness against the occupying Allied powers - who had broken a briefly glorious empire, humiliated their great nation, and then had the audacity to morally condemn them as criminals against humanity itself (complete with war crime tribunals) - still managed to become a premier leader of Europe within a decade, and (miraculously) a friend of the US.

Is it optimistic to hope the same for Iraq? Well, duh, of course. But is it unprecedented? Hardly. And it would be intellectually dishonest to deny either point.

 

Well, there was also the "liberation" of Middle-Eastern Europe by the USSR with full consent of the allies who thus betrayed and sold allied countries like Poland and Czech Republic.

The reds came in, slaughtered some nobles, dispossessed the rest in the name of their wicked struggle of classes, they killed thousands of military officers, civil officers, educated people, mental workers, businessmen (dispossessed en masse) and similar.

The allied powers didn't do anything about that and cooperated with Stalin against their allies. Guilt by association if you ask me. Not like their attitude in 1938 (Munich) and 1939 (the invasion of Poland by Nazis) was any better, despite alliance treaties, all guarantees and so on. Heck, they gave us even more such empty guarantees in order that we would cancel the mobilisation of our forces in August 1939 (the invasion started on September 1st).

Nothing romantic about WWII, if you ask me.

 

Yes, I could not agree more. One can only hope that Shrub will return to Crawford, Texas soon, and America can once again become "peaceful and democratic."

 

Its like a game, if only one of our "units" dies for every 100 of theirs its ok, cuz our score is higher.

We beat their Zerg rush and only lost one marine! r0xx0rz!

Nice, a dead countryman is "not a bad ratio"

 

Grey,
when I mentioned that our darkage "only" lasted 15 years, I did so to point out that there were still democrats from the old days left and that there was an understanding of how democracy works around. Despite the nazis we still had remainders of the old democratic parties alive who knew how to organise, how to do politics and so on. That is, Germany's democracy project after WW-II didn't start by zero.

What has always surprised me is that my relatives, speaking about the war, do not speak with hate, my whacko nazi uncle excluded. An aunt of mine had been deported by russia to do forced labor in a siberian coalmine. What had she done? Well, she, a farmers daughter, was overrun by the russian offensive. In Siberia she lost half her lung in a cave-in accident. She wasn't bitter. "In the end," she said "we had it just as bad as the russians there. The russian workers there were kind people. When I think back to Siberia I always remember the flowers in the brief summer."
Same for my granny, no hate or bitternis, she was glad it eventually was over and didn't want anything but to forget about it to live a normal life.

In a day and age where air raids are as frequent and 'normal' as rain you may stop taking it personal - it happened to everyone else as well. But I can imagine that someone who had endured individual wanton abuse like in Abu Ghraib could not forgive and forget so easily.
On the escape from East Prussia my dad, aged 15, ended up in east germany first, and there he encountered polish troops who made the fun of mock-executing him (didn't something like that happen to Iraqis by US guards?). That he could not forgive.

And I agree, the de-nazification of Germany wasn't done by the allies in a decade, actually they sorted out the worst nazis - only if they weren't useful. It was our domestic left 68er movement, defining itself not only as anti-war but in confrontation with the nazi-past of their parents. "What did you do in the war daddy?"
It was them who confronted the last nazis in positions of power. We came to an end with the de-nazification sonwhere around 1980, nevertheless we had been a democracy since 1948 or so, when the first elections were held in germany on a local level.
Looking at the US installed right juntas around the globe we got a pretty good deal, we had excess fascists without human rights abuses after the war.

Well, I have told that episode to someone else here before, but then why not: I worked for a large industry company specialising in designing and constructing concrete production plants. Before Gulf War I the company also had projects in Iraq, and I met an engeneer who spent a while there on these projects. He, a very experienced specialist who worked on cement production projects for 25 years at the time he was there, was deeply impressed by the know-how of the Iraqi engeneers in the Iraqi industry ministry - they, knowing the products of the competitors, gave him tips and specifications on how to improve his factories - iirc improving the output by 5%. The Iraqi engeneers and specialists were top notch, western educated experts and just as good as your US enegeneers - they may even have shared courses at the same universities.

Question: When you are about to reconstruct a damaged factory - who would you ask - the enegeneer who oversaw and organised the construction, enforced very strict quality standards (the Iraqis were very pedantic about quality my eneneer recalled) and, say, did that for twenty years and then maybe ran the factory for a decade - or some outsider, a guy from Halliburton, Texas?
Corrupt or not, the Iraqi sure wins at technical and local expertise - and that is what counts when it's about reconstruction - the US can deal with corruption well enough by controlling his spending. No one talks about blanco-cheques.

In the reconstruction Iraqis were only involved in the effort at very low key positions and to a very small degree - the US preferred to send in Americans because they didn't trust the locals. And sending in Halliburton because you know them and because the Iraqis are corrupt and incompetent and have funny moustaches anyway ... well, sounds like a lame excuse based on arrogant prejudice to me.

In Germany the factories were rebuilt so quick because the people who rebuilt the factoris were mostly those people who ran and built them before the war. They may have been corrupt or have had a nazi background even, but they understood their factories and knew how to best repair and modernise them. One of the keys to the "Wirtschaftswunder" was that the factories were not only rebuilt but improved as well - soon outperforming the obsolete competitors.
Halliburton has no egoistic motive, like gettting back into business quick to make cash, to make the Iraqi economy - it is not their factory but just another lucrative job. They lack the drive a local would have rebuilding *his* industry.

When Iraq needed a Marshall Plan, the US gave it "Planwirtschaft" - amusingly the US, who loathe socialism and like to stress the importance of free enterprise and independent business initiative, went to Iraq in a socialist economy and replaced the experienced if flawed professional management with inexperienced foreigners, sometimes kids who just left university - to reform the Iraqi economy to western standards - per decree from political leadership without any hands on experience - just like in a socialist state. And that under GOP rule. Not without irony.

Now that the US and germany have pretty friendly relations today is that there have never been the sort of tensions the US presence has caused in South-Korea, Phillipines or Okinawa. It may be because Germans are white skinned as well. I feel the Germans got more respect as opponents when compared to darker skinned people or asians.
The US exercised a massive influence in Germany as well after the war, but less intrusive. They wouldn't have had a chance to pull off something like the occupation of Okinawa here, and I think they wouldn't have dared.

[ May 31, 2004, 11:56: Message edited by: Ragusa ]

 

No on all questions regarding Ragusas test.