But Germany had been democratic for a while before WWII. Remember that Hitler was actually elected Chancellor.
Very briefly and weakly. Weimar Germany is a byword for a failed democracy. Japan of course had no such tradition at all.
Also, there was no "insurgency" in either case, which meant there was no ongoing violence once the war was over.
Not quite true; there was a low level on going insurgency in Germany for several years. But the situation was completely different. Germany had been smashed and occupied in a conventional war. The Iraqis didn't put up a conventional resistance; fighting an unconventional war always takes longer.
What's also sad is that the current state of affairs in Iraq was fairly easy to foresee, and there were those who warned us about it
Yeah? There were even more voices predicted Stalingrad-on-the-Tigris, a humanitarian catastrophe, 5 million refugees, etc. The UN built tent cities on the borders that were never used.
Whenever something bad happens, you can find someone after the fact who claims to have predicted it. Doesn't mean they did. If fact, no one quite knew what would happen in Iraq. Iraq was a place where there had been no politics at all for 35 years, just utter, brutal repression. People were pretty well sure that Iraqis would not fight for Saddam and would cheer whoever got rid of him - they did - but beyond that, no one knew. Including the Iraqis. For once, Tom Friedman had a good catch phrase when he said, "when we occupy Iraq, are we going to find the Arab East Germany or the Arab Yugoslavia?"
The one thing that could have been better predicted was the attraction of an American army in Baghdad to Al Qaeda and international jihadis. |
