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Old 12-31-2003, 01:39 AM   #98 (permalink)
Endymon32
Banned
 
Quote:
Originally posted by Sparhawk
*sigh* This is a particularly insiduous lie being spread by the current administration.

http://slate.msn.com/id/2087768/

A few blurbs, feel free to click and read all of it:





emphasis mine.

What you apparently didn’t bother to do is read Perry Biddiscombe’s “Werwolf! The History of the National Socialist Guerrilla Movement, 1944-1946,” which gives full chapter and verse on Nazi-postwar guerrilla operations. It’s true that the Werwolf was poorly organized, and the threat of attacks greatly subsided after a few months of occupation. But they were very real. A survey of records by the U.S. Army Center of Military History shows that at least 39 combat deaths occurred in the first few months of the occupation. If the Nazis had been better organized, the Werwolf might well have given World War II GIs as much trouble as the thugs in Iraq are generating now.

And Werwolves weren’t the only problem. Violent crime, thievery and black-marketing were rampant. Germans incessantly complained to U.S. military officials about inadequate public safety. And these threats paled in comparison to the physical privations. Many feared masses of Germans would freeze or starve to death in the first winter after the war. To suggest that the first year of occupation was anything less than a dreadful, harrowing experience for many Germans is just bad history.

Making the postwar reconstruction of Europe appear like a walk in the park suggests that somehow this administration must have screwed things up terribly to face such a plethora of problems. In fact, history suggests the opposite.

Occupations are rarely easy. And it’s understandable that the Pentagon couldn’t completely and precisely predict the postwar conditions it would face in Iraq. In time of conflict, it’s impossible to fully anticipate the end state--what the country will look like after the war. There is a “fog of peace” fully as dense as the “fog of war,” the phrase Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz used to describe why battles never go as planned.

Misusing the past offers little insight to understanding the scope of the challenge the United States faces today. In truth, the key to success in Iraq is to take a page from the occupations in postwar Europe: Stand-up a legitimate government and domestic police forces, and let the people rebuild their own country.

It took four years to do that in post World War II Germany. Sometimes it takes that much time and effort to be on the right side of history.
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