It's important to acknowledge the truth in the example of Germany and Japan. When two countries set out on a real (and not imagined) quest for world domination, and lose huge percentages of their military and civilian populations, and have their cities reduced to rubble, and are completely cowed, and realize at some level that it was their own aggression that led them to be so brutally beaten, and when the rest of the world community is united against them, you can rebuild such countries from the ashes. I don't think you can always predict what will be rebuilt, but you certainly have a pretty fair shot at nation building.
After you acknowledge these truths the question you have to ask yourself is, does Iraq deserve to be reduced to rubble so we can "rebuild" it? What, exactly, have they done that make them deserving of the kind of brutal beating we gave Japan and Germany? Even now we agonize over the civilian casualties in Germany and Japan (and I don't mean everyone does, but people who are interested in ethics do), and there are many who feel that some of the acts were war crimes, but at LEAST we had foes who might have merited war crimes being perpetrated on them (or at the very least there is room for that moral argument). Is there anyone (well anyone logical and moral) who could make out a case for the US perpetrating equally alarming civilian attacks on Iraq?
If you look at what the Axis powers did, and their strength, and the extent of their reach, and the eventual punishment meted out to them, it's just crazy to mention Iraq in the same context. It is, quite literally, historical insanity or gross ignorance. Not that there isn't plenty of historical ignorance and insanity to go around, but this is a particularly foul and crazy canard. |
