I think this has been touched on before but given recent events in Iraq I thought I’d ask. I know left wingers have seen these guerilla actions and immediately started cheering in giddy anticipation that we might have another Vietnam.(Since it might cost GW the presidency.) Of course right wingers have been doing the “nope, no Vietnam. Everything is fine, please drive through and don’t think about it.” So I was curious how this bit of post war looneyness compares to say other conflicts. I mean places like Japan and Germany after WWII or South Korea etc. Is this new thing in Iraq like anything in the past or a whole new kettle of fish?
As far as Germany was concerned there seems not to have been anti-occupation insurgency at the Iraqi scale after the surrender (there had been some incidents before, e.g the assassination of the mayor of American-occupied Aachen).
An interesting account of the early period of the occupation.
German wartime propaganda had created the spectre of a terrorist movement named Werwolf in occupied territory, but apparently this did not materialize apart from some isolated attempts.
Of course there were a lot of desperate people in Germany, so nonpolitical crime must have been a significant threat to occupation soldiers. I recently read an account on the last execution in Tübingen, shortly before the new German constitution with its ban on the death penalty came into force: The man in question had murdered an American soldier just to steal his truck.
It should be noted that some beneficial circumstances obtained that do not today with regard to Iraq:
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the military leadership had signed an authoritative unconditional surrender, so no-one could think resistance was legally sanctioned or could possibly be ultimately successful.
Not the case in Iraq. -
the political leadership was dead or in Allied custody.
Not the case in Iraq. -
millions of young men were either dead or POW, and the POWs were released only gradually over a period of years (a decade in the case of the USSR). In one respect the first postwar years must have been very nice for young men who had already been released.
In Iraq the armed forces seem to just have been demobilized. -
it must have been quite a bit harder to work up outrage at having been invaded because clearly Germany had been the aggressor.
Not the case in Iraq. -
No widespread possession of military-grade weapons, either from previous government policy or from looting military stores.
Iraq, in contrast, seems to be/have been a gun nut’s wet dream. -
No ethnic/religious conflicts whose violent resolution had hitherto only be prevented by government oppression.
Not the case in Iraq.
I might add that one assumption of the OP is not warranted and is more than a little offensive: that people who did not want this war in the first place now are happy about American and British soldiers and Iraqis being killed now.