Er…huh?? Do you see some comparison with the Soviet occupation of the eastern European countries and the US occupation of Iraq? I’d be facinated to see how the two compare.
-XT
Thanks. I was aware of the Werwolf attacks, but not that they were so widespread. Mind you, there seems to be some dispute about this on Wikipedia itself. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Werwolf
You’re kidding?
Not a problem. Confusing Iraq and Iran (and the threats posed by each) apparently can happen to the best of us.
Or at least Team Wolfowitz.
http://www.exile.ru/2004-November-13/war_nerd.html
This guy makes the rhetorical point that, if not Saddam, it may be someone very like Saddam who is the most likely candidate to hold onto Iraq for any period of time.
It’s an excellent point. The regimes that seem to have had any kind of stability in that region have in many cases followed the “Arab Strongman” model. Which doesn’t allow for a whole lot of free and open dissent. Was Saddam a jerk? Sure. Is it necessary to be a jerk to hold onto power for 30 years in a religiously and tribally divided society where a significant number of people believe in decapitation and jihad? Probably.
The key question seems to be if you could be jerklike enough to rein in the chaos that is “Iraqi society” while not being excessively jerky in killing all your enemies and building giant palaces. The answer is probably that it is not necessary to be a sadist or paranoid in order to be a near absolute-despot/strongman, but that the one set of personality traits is rarely found without the other, as it happens.
What this points up to me is the irresponsibility of the intentional pre-war soft-peddling. Sure, the Iraqi people are basically democracy-loving soccer moms who just want their little girls to go to school, and live in a religiously pluralistic society with free elections. It was glib, contrary-to-fact, and deceptive. I can’t remember any of Bush’s team admitting the degree of tribal enmity that seems to pervade Iraq, or the depths of the religous factionalism and the extent to which “clerics” can stir up military opposition based on religious appeals. Perhaps it was not comme il faut even to mention the word “tribes,” with all its implication of primitive factionalism and disorder. But understanding the tribal situation was kind of important, no?
I suspect that the odds of finding a successful leader by looking for a Saddam-like strongman who will crack heads and rein in the tribes and sects through intimidation, as Brecher suggests, are substantially higher than the odds of any Allawi/U.S. “democratically” installed regime keeping the country from chaos for more than a few years.
No, I’m not kidding. Dazzle me with this comparison between the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe and the present day US occupation of Iraq. For bonus points you can explain how the current US occupation of Iraq differs substantially between the US occupation of Germany and Japan and the use of force on our part to install ‘democratic’ governments in those two countries…and how this different with what the Soviets did in Eastern Europe, especially the ‘letting go’ aspect, or allowing them to eventually set their own course.
I’ve certainly seen things like this before, re: Arab Strongman model and I think they are valid…to a point. However, as I said before, I don’t think it NECESSARILY has to be true…or that it has to remain true.
The example of Japan is valid…this was also a nation who was used to the ‘strongman’ model for most (if not all) of its history. It was also a nation of religious fanatasism (or perhaps nationalist fanaticism). True, it wasn’t deeply divided along tribal lines, so perhaps that invalidates the comparison…or maybe not. But Japan was forced to ‘democracy’, never having anything close to a ‘democracy’ before, by an occupying US. Certainly all initial governments were ‘US puppets’, and the list of choices for those initial governments were closely controlled by the US. Eventually however ‘democracy’ took root in Japan and they were free to go their own way…which, as I pointed out, is completely different than the US ‘democratic’ system and unique to themselves.
However, I agree that the most likely course is another ‘arab strongman’, albiet with some ties to the people through an initial election process which may or may not be set aside at a later time as said strongman siezes power. Perhaps this is the only way to rule in the ME…my hope is that this isn’t the case.
-XT
Japan - lookup “Taisho Democracy”. Japan did have a parliamentary form of government in the 1920s. AFAIK, the movement was completely indigenous.
Korea - By accident of history, Allied forces were viewed by some Koreans as anti-colonial. Koreans fought on the Allied side to expell the Japanese. That makes it a bit easier to impose a concept(if in fact it was foreign to them).
Someelse has mentiond India and Greece. Britain stayed in India 200+ years; if we stay in Iraq that long, perhaps we can make democracy work.
Greece - If I’m not mistaken, that’s the place where we get many of democratic ideas to being with, from the Greek city states.
In any case, the U.S. has maintained substantial military force in Japan and S. Korea for half a century. I’m not entirely sure that’s what we should be looking forward to, relative Iraq.
In Japan and Germany we banned numerous parties from the election, why not do the same to the fundamentalist parties in Iraq that could get power?
This comparison to World War II is just not valid. German and Japan were culturally homogenous and technically advanced countries. When the war ended, they gave up collectively, and they were eager to return to their pre-war standard of living. Your cite of the German Werwolf movement is interesting, but the movement is not at all comparable to the Iraqi insurgents. Although they might have caused some delay in rebuilding, the Germans were incredibly peaceful after the cessation of hostilities.
Because then it would lose any claim to be a “democratic” election??
As Bushco claims to have brought “freedom” to Iraq, surely no other people other than Iraqis should have a say in either who stands for election, or who finally is elected?
Otherwise this so called ‘Iraqi freedom and Democracy’ would be nothing but a farce.
Instant ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’ ehe? Just add water I suppose. It amazes me the ridiculous impatients about this thing. If 5 or 10 years from now Iraq doesn’t have a stable government, if they aren’t electing pretty much whoever they want (assuming of course they even GET a ‘democracy’) THEN come back and say these kinds of thing. 2 years in? Come on guys. Can’t we at least TRY and keep this stuff real? Just from a historic perspective alone…these things take time.
-XT
Do you mean that until about 10 years have passed there is a fear that Iraqis won’t vote for the right [ie pro-USA] candidate?
Either it’s a democratic election, as promised by Bushco, or it is a total farce.
I mean that THIS election is too soon to just throw it wide open to all contenders…and its ridiculous to assert that it should be that way. Were the Germans allowed to vote for a Nazi party candidate in their first ‘staged’ election? Were the Japanese allowed to vote for the War Party in their ‘staged’ election? Why should the Iraqi’s be allowed to vote for a radical islamic candidate in THIS election exactly?
It WILL be a democratic election…it just won’t be fully representational this first time (i.e. there won’t be any representation from the radical Islamic crowd)…and claiming it should be is ridiculous IMO. It completely ignores other historical precidents of similar situations. Or are you saying Truman-co forcing elections in Japan and Germany was a ‘total farce’ also? Are you claiming that TODAY in Japan and Germany the elections are still a farce…and that those governments remain puppets to the US?
-XT
Then it won’t be democratic - unless you are changing your definition of ‘democracy’. Why should any other country have a say in Iraqi elections - some people here were very outspoken recently about outsiders even voicing opinions on the USA elections!
Because that country lost a war, just like Japan and Germany. After losing a war, them’s the breaks.
If another country wants to dictate election terms in the United States, I suggest taking us on in a fight to do so.
Germany and Japan were the instigators of WWII. It’s not like the US decided out of the blue to invade them and impose a new government on them. They started something they couldn’t finish, and had their collective asses handed to them. That’s an altogether different scenario.
Iraq is still predominantly tribal, culturally speaking. Allegiances are to tribe first, and nation a distant second. Japan and Germany both had robust national identities which provided some sort of common ground for a democracy to work from.
It’s certainly possible for Iraq to become a democracy, but it’s not going to happen in the next few years. Democracy needs to be embraced, not imposed, and Iraq at the moment hasn’t the indigenous social institutions to support it (where Germany and Japan both certainly did). Instead, the best case scenario is a Saddam-lite strongman who will keep a lid on things by brute force on a large scale, but allow a fair bit of municipal autonomy where grassroots democractic ideas can begin to grow. That’s not real likely, though. Most likely case is Iraq drifts into a Lebanese-style civil war on a larger scale. Worst case, it splinters into pieces and we get a region-wide war with Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Iran exploiting the fragmentation and/or trying to prevent bits of their countries from splitting off with similar ethnic groups in bordering bits of Iraq.
Anyone who thinks that the January election is going to mean anything is very, very naive.
Jordan’s constitutional monarchy comes close. The upper house of Parliament is appointed by the king but the lower house is elected.
Easy. In both cases, the countries were invaded and liberated/occupied by a foreign superpower with an ideological commitment to imposing a particular kind of social and political system – in the case of the Warsaw Pact countries, Stalin’s vision of Communism; in the case of Iraq, the neocons’ vision of capitalism and “democratic” government. In both cases, governments were established that were nominally independent but obviously puppets of the conquering power. In both cases, the arrangement turned out to be economically unprofitable for the conquering power but was stubbornly maintained for military/political and ideological reasons.
But there’s an important difference: The Soviets were occupying countries contiguous to their own territory, easy to reach and easy to defend.
Actually, it was Hussein who secularized Iraq, allowed women to shed the burka and get good jobs, etc. The Islamist forces he suppressed have been unleashed by our invasion.
So noted. But we also initially made the honor killings and such that were still legal illegal, finishing off the secularization - OK, not so much secularization, but culturalization. Or something. You get the point. What we took away they’ll probably slowly bring back. They’re probably gonna give Saddam the axe despite agreeing not to, for example.