1946 Time-Life article on post-WW2 European reconstruction

That was some of the best reading I've done in awhile.

 

here is something i found interesting

He seems to make a concious recognition that the americans were not behind this act.

 

Is it me or did these last two posts get put in the wrong thread?

The "Healing Iraq" link was good reading (along with links from it to others. It is nice to see these people realize that their culture is screwing things up for them. I also believe the INET will be a big help in bringing the Iraqs' upto date.

 

A couple things to clarify:

1) I was not able to read that blogspot you posted. It was down.

2) The purpose of my posting was to discourage this notion that Iraq is just like post-war Germany, which is what the first 10-15 posts of this thread were designed to do, and which the Bush administration is trying to push. The two are very incomparable. There was no real active guerrilla resistance once the war ended. Comparing the two is a deliberate attempt at ignoring the realities of today's situation.

3) There are plenty of people within even the State Department itself who thought that our plan for post-war Iraq was largely inadequate. There were even plans, for instance, to control looting, which were largely scrapped. For an interesting take on how the post-war effort has taken shape, I suggest you all see PBS Frontline's special: truth, war, and consequences. The entire thing can be viewed online at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/truth/view/

4) It has been widely documented that the statue toppling you describe was a sham. The Iraqis present were flown in, many from Ahmed Chalabi's personal militia.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3024.htm
http://www.coldtype.net/Assets/pdfs/12.Nim.April14.pdf

5) You're acting like these are just murders committed for no reason by random people. This isn't just "urban crime", it is organized resistance. In fact, it is organized resistance that appears to be be significantly more deadly and successful than the Palestinian resistance. You, Bush, Rummy, and an alarmingly high number of people on this board seem to want to simply gloss this all over...

6) Although in private, that can sometimes be a different story:

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm...nm/iraq_usa_memo_dc&cid=564&ncid=1478

I'm also fairly skeptical of many of the reports coming back from US soldiers in Iraq after reading this:

http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-letter15.html

While no one may have been deliberately forced, were I in their situation, I would find myself fairly compelled to obey the wishes of my military commander, regardless of whether or not I felt what was being said was true, or whether there were official sanctions. The military teaches you how to follow orders unquestioningly, and this seems like something I'd want to do to keep on my boss's good side.

 

We also left Iraq mostly intact; whereas germany was nearly completely destroyed after a LONG "resistance".

Yes, all the people were flown in. No real Iraqi's were there. Whatever. The photo used as proof on the informationclearhouse website is the same one that's been debunked as being completely unrepresentative of what was going on. In other photographic and videographic evidence, you see crowds that are not in that photo that they present as proof. Its obvious that their photo was taken much later after the crowd had dispersed.

Please, don't just read the anti-war sites, and the innumerable Indymedia posts on this topic. Look at the photos yourself. Look at the entire collection of photos and try to reconcile them with the photo presented by your linked website. They just don't match.

http://www.right-thinking.com/comments.php?id=P1118_0_1_0
http://pantheon.yale.edu/~mld42/Saddam_Statue_Toppling_on_CNN.jpg

Some of it is organized resistance, some of it is not. The Sunni triangle stuff is likely "organized" resistance, mixed with Arab "muhajadeen". The recent unrest in Karbala and Fajulla is centered around Shi'ite interfighting and the US being caught in the middle. It doesn't take many upset people to kill americans.

You were skeptical before, admit it.

 

Please do not put words into the mouths of others. Lets not ignore societal norms and how they effect reactions and thus can partially explain the different reactions.

 

Depends on what you mean by "nearly completely destroyed". Several cities were bombed ruins, supplies were low, but the (physical) industry and infrastructure were mostly left intact, apart from that which was taken away after the war.

 

Because everyone knows that it's a societal norm for Iraqis to kill American soldiers, and that wasn't the case in Nazi Germany?

While I have significant reservations about what you just stated here, (Two Gulf Wars and 12 years of sanctions most certainly did NOT leave Iraq "mostly intact"), if the devastation is in fact significantly less than what was experienced in Germany that is all the more reason why the two are incomparable. Whereas in Germany you could argue that much of the confusion and chaos was the result of a MASSIVE destruction of virtually all German infrastructure, in Iraq you would have less cause with which to make that case.

No Russ, that has been debunked. If you look at the photo there and the one on Indymedia, you'll notice that there's hardly any overlap in the size of the crowd. When you discount journalists and soldiers, there were almost certainly not more than 250 people there. And those that are there hardly seem to be enthusiastic.

Also, you dismiss the site I listed as "informationclearinghouse propaganda", but the interview being shown at the time was from SBS TV Australia.

I admit it. Damn it hurts to be right.

 

Also, the article from informationclearinghouse I showed didn't even have that picture, so what are you talking about? It was an interview with someone who was at the scene. I'm guessing you didn't even open it and assumed you knew what it was.

 

Could you clarify that remark. When you refer to Nazi Germany are you referring to the military or the populace?

 

Egad.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article2842.htm

Do you even explore the links you post? Or are you happy enough to find somebody parroting the information you want to hear and use it as proof?

LOOK AT THE IMAGES! There are people CLEARLY in the CNN photo that are not in the image posted at informationclearinghouse. Where are the people standing in front of the Mosque in the CNN photo? They're not in the one in the Indymedia photo. Where are they? Where's the statue in the indymedia photo? WHERE?! Could it be that the person who presents that photo as PROOF has an axe to grind and is willing to lie about it? No, never, that's the government's job, of course.

 

I was actually just about to ask the same thing from you. What did you mean by "differences in societal norms"? If there are different societal norms at work here that in Germany no soldiers were killed and in Iraq well over 100 have been killed already, how are the two situations comparable. I guess that was kind of the point I was trying to make, although perhaps I did it badly.

 

What about this one? (linked to in said article)

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/images/SQ3.gif

Fairly comparable crowd sizes, and this happened before the as they were hooking up the statues.

And of course I accept the idea that the source I quoted may have been lying. But it is also fair to note that the U.S. military did in fact have the entire area cordoned off, and a large percentage of the people there were in fact journalists. And it's not like the U.S. didn't have a public relations battle to win. But of course they couldn't lie, only leftists can do that.

 

The people in the "wide angle shot" most used to discredit the Saddam toppling as a "fake" do not correspond with the second image you posted. You are being willfully mislead if you believe so. There are no people across the street in the wide angle shot; there are in the closer shots. It is that hard to accept that the "discrediting" shot was not capturing the same moment in time as the toppling of the statue?

I'm definately not saying that the toppling wasn't planned; I'm not saying that there were millions of people there, but it was not completely staged as the indymedia crowd would lead you to believe. People were not trucked in at gunpoint like I've seen some nuts suggest.

Yes, virginia, some Iraqi's do like freedom, even if brought by "infidels".

 

http://www.tc.umn.edu/~mitt0047/images/numbers.jpg (it's a big jpeg, about 485k)

Now, granted Russ, I didn't finish it, (it was boring as hell), but I think I got at least half of them. The ones in Red are ones that I thought were pretty obviously soldiers. I also failed to pick out journalists in this, although there appeared to be many of them, (I don't think there are too many Iraqis walking around Baghdad with 1000 dollar cameras on them, although I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt and say that they were indeed enthusiastic Iraqis capturing this momentus event on film to show their grandkids someday), and I also made quite a few counts that were most likely not people at all, but just to be safe I included them. Also notice that at least around 95% of the people pictured appeared to be men. I can just picture it now: "Honey, you stay home and protect the children. I'm going to go pave the way for our liberation".

Let's just assume that you are completely in the right, and that I'm completely in the wrong. We'll say there were 1000 cheering people there screeming "Hurrah, Hurrah, for the U S of A!", and that the only reason there weren't a million and a half was because A. The security situation was still pretty shakey and people were afraid to venture outside their houses and B. because the square couldn't hold that much. I think I'm being more than generous with you here. Why then, as the situation has 'dramatically improved', as the Bush administration and you yourself seem to be implying, have we not seen torrents of similar outpourings across Iraq since? If there ARE people shouting out "Down, Down, with Saddam", it seems as if it is usually followed by "America Is The Enemy Of God". I mean, I haven't even seen one single parade for our troops. Even Chalabi, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz's bussom buddy, has come out pretty harshly against the administration several times. What's the deal?

 

My original point was that it is perhaps natural (considering human behavior) consequence that which ever party is in control after a major conflict would bear a considerable amount of backlash.

My comment about societal norms is just an observation that in the west dictators, coups, organized religious sect violence etc. Are far more uncommon. In a area where it is more common I would think that it would be more likely to see the kind of things we are seeing today in Iraq

 

So, we'll increase the number by 35. Happy now?

Did you ever hear me say they were trucked in at gunpoint? Nope. So why are you bringing it up? I did say that given the tight security around the square, they likely didn't end up on their own. They could well have been part of the supporters of the INC, who I think would have gladly taken part in the action, for free in fact, BUT do not by even the wildest stretch of Salvador Dali's imagination come close to representing the Iraqi population as a whole. They could aslo be, as the author from the Australian Television special suggested, be brought in from Saddam City, which would mean they are a bought crowd. They could also be curious onlookers wondering what the hell those crazies over there are doing. After you take those out, I find it hard to believe that many of those present were genuine neighborhood Iraqis rejoicing at the fall of Saddam and praising America, (this is NOT to say that most Iraqis weren't glad to see him go).

 

Yet if you compare the backlash U.S. troops are recieving today to what happened in Germany, (a country that was much more a military match for the United States, than the guerrilla fighters facing U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan), it is almost impossible to compare the two and say that the situations are similar.

What democratic tradition did Germany, Italy, and Japan have in 1945? a decade or so of the Weimar? And even then you had numerous attempts to overthrow it, from worker's advocating revolution to the culmination of the fascists rise to power. That sure isn't a whole lot.

 

If fixing means bombing civilians, invading other countries, committing unpunished war crimes, using weapons of mass destruction, then yes, indeed, we expect the USA to fix everything for us as it happened during WW2 and now in IRAQ.

 

I like to inform you that some of the current laws in USA, especially the Patriot Act, are not very different from the bulk of the nazy laws which went against human rights and freedoms. This makes current USA regime very similiar to the countries you have just mentioned in 1945. In other words, while those countries have evolved since then, USA seems to not have learnt the lesson of WW2.
Iraq illegal invasion is sadly a consequence of this not learn lesson.