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2004-06-28 Iraq-Jordan
Reconstruction: Putting It In Context
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Posted by Chuck Simmins 2004-06-28 1:47:57 PM|| || Front Page|| [2 views since 2007-05-07]  Top

#1 U.S. troops removed: PENDING 59yrs, and counting
Posted by Steve  2004-06-28 2:05:52 PM||   2004-06-28 2:05:52 PM|| Front Page Top

#2 What about: "defacing the memorials of American liberators?" - really that's France, though.
Posted by Super Hose  2004-06-28 2:28:23 PM||   2004-06-28 2:28:23 PM|| Front Page Top

#3 No wonder the Germans are pissed. End the brutal US occupation of Germany NOW!
Posted by ed 2004-06-28 2:30:25 PM||   2004-06-28 2:30:25 PM|| Front Page Top

#4 This is the final portion of the CPA report on their accomplishments, only formated better. It would be impolite to mention that we still occupy Germany.
Posted by Chuck Simmins  2004-06-28 2:30:52 PM|| [http://blog.simmins.org]  2004-06-28 2:30:52 PM|| Front Page Top

#5 Thanks, Chuck. A must-read for high schools of South Korea, Spain, France, Germany, Chile.........
Posted by jules 187 2004-06-28 3:09:49 PM||   2004-06-28 3:09:49 PM|| Front Page Top

#6 How about "defeat of insurrection"?
Posted by Aris Katsaris  2004-06-28 4:29:16 PM||   2004-06-28 4:29:16 PM|| Front Page Top

#7 Aris that would be 3 weeks (tab) 6 years.
Posted by Shipman 2004-06-28 4:35:56 PM||   2004-06-28 4:35:56 PM|| Front Page Top

#8 You may have a point there, Aris; do you know how long it was before all struggle against the allies (in denial that Germany had lost) ended?

IMO, our restraint has produced the longer time-frame you infer. MOABs would probably shorten that, but I imagine their use is unlikely at this point?
Posted by jules 187 2004-06-28 4:39:36 PM||   2004-06-28 4:39:36 PM|| Front Page Top

#9 "defeat of insurrection"?

The Werewolves were defeated in 1947 with several million occupation troops.

FYI:
Yet the Allies took no chances. Between 1945 and 1949 the Western Allies alone interned 200,000 former members of the Nazi Party, its various organizations and former Nazi government officials. Over 100,000 were indicted for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Of them over 6,000 were convicted and something over 800 death sentences were carried out. The Nazi party was crushed and outlawed and the German state ceased to exist as a national body for the four years of the occupation. The state apparatus, including the diplomatic and military leadership was dissolved and many of its leading officials were indicted and put on trial in the "successor trials" in Nuremberg between 1947 and 1949 which followed the main International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg of fall 1945 to fall 1946.

See, all it took was that, and the death of 12% of the German population. Aris why do you want to kill off 12% Iraqis? What have you you got Muslims? Are you still sore about Greeks living under Muslim occupation for hundreds of years and losing the best parts of Greek lands? How many Greeks died, were massacred and ethnically cleansed during the "Great Idea"? That's what I like about Greece, such Great Thinkers just bursting with Great Ideas.
Posted by ed 2004-06-28 4:44:23 PM||   2004-06-28 4:44:23 PM|| Front Page Top

#10 QUAGMIRE!
Posted by Chris W.  2004-06-28 4:49:27 PM||   2004-06-28 4:49:27 PM|| Front Page Top

#11 Shipman> It took me a while to understand you were talking about the length of the main warfare, rather than about the occupation phase.
I'm talking about the latter.

jules> I had heard there was no significant insurrection in Germany -- that the Werewolf thingy was a triviality. And that's there's not a single documented case of an American killed by guerillas in Germany after its capitulation.

Nothing even approaching the level of Fallujah, Sadr or Zarqawi.

Am I wrong in this?

ed> Those many hundreds thousands of people were killed during the main military opeations thingy, not in the "occupation" phase. But my main point is to keep the thing in perspective. You can quite easily declare a government "government", issue bank notes, draft a constitution.

But AS LONG AS THE WAR CONTINUES, and the enemies of all the above still have considerable enough power that the so-called "established" Iraqi army and police can't wave them aside at will -- are the things in that table really meaningful?
Posted by Aris Katsaris  2004-06-28 5:01:05 PM||   2004-06-28 5:01:05 PM|| Front Page Top

#12 Aris, although I disagree with the author of this article, I do agree that the Beder Meinhoff does qualify as an insurgency on the same level and metality as Zarqawi and his Shiite Iranian friends.
Posted by Super Hose 2004-06-28 5:07:49 PM||   2004-06-28 5:07:49 PM|| Front Page Top

#13 Aris is ignoring the facts #9 if bringing forth. If we did in Iraq what was done in Germany, He'd be squawking a different tune, guaranteed.

Another difference between Germany and Iraq is the existence of Aris' pals: Ever since the Tet offensive was turned from a military victory to a political defeat, revolutionaries, insurgents, terrorists, and thugs knew they could count on cultural and intellectual traitors like the Democrats, liberals, the media, and europeans, to lend their voices to destroy unity and the will to victory.
Posted by Ptah  2004-06-28 5:18:48 PM|| [http://www.crusaderwarcollege.org]  2004-06-28 5:18:48 PM|| Front Page Top

#14 Aris, wars don't end until those who benefit from the regime are dead or think warfare has much greater cost than possible benefit. In the brutal Middle eastern culture, having total power over Iraq, its people, and its oil income is quite an incentive.

About 10%, or 2-3 million, of the Iraqis (mostly Sunnis) benefitted quite a bit from Saddam's rule. Are you saying that the war should not have stopped until they (2-3 million Sunnis) were dead. Who many hundreds of thousands or millions should be imprisoned in internment camps? Or do you advocate random terror, such as that practiced in Saddam's Iraq, to keep the Sunni's (and foreign jihadis) head down? What kind of monster are you?
Posted by ed 2004-06-28 5:27:02 PM||   2004-06-28 5:27:02 PM|| Front Page Top

#15 Superhose> Bader Meinhoff and the Red Brigades were, if anything, part of the Cold War conflict, not the WW2 conflict. Whole different war.

Ptah> Other than your claims of knowing what tune I'd be squawking, not to mention who my "pals" are, are you bringing anything to the debate?

ed> What kind of monster are you?

The kind of monster who's not willing to have a discussion on such a level, especially after the call to end flamewars in this forum.

Your points are well made, but they illustrate exactly the problems that the aforeseen selective table *isn't* illustrating. You are on *my* side of the argument, when you say that the war on Iraq is continuing.

Unlike the table which wants to claim that every issue has been solved (and faster than happened with WW2) with the sole exception it seems of the pending trials.
Posted by Aris Katsaris  2004-06-28 5:50:42 PM||   2004-06-28 5:50:42 PM|| Front Page Top

#16 does the table indicate everygthings been solved? Like most tables of this nature, its silent - it tempts you to draw such a conclusion but doesnt say so. All it says is that certain landmarks have been reached surprisingly fast. which is true. Even if security is not yet achieved.
Posted by Liberalhawk 2004-06-28 5:54:33 PM||   2004-06-28 5:54:33 PM|| Front Page Top

#17 Aris would you call the insurgency, rebellion, upheaveal, angriness, football riot in Iraq a war? It's lawlessness pure and simple there is no oppostion force that can't be crushed in 98 hours.

Given that... there is an information war which has served to moderate the US response to the mayhem.

And thanks for the stadium info... I thought it was archery only.... I will pass it on.

Posted by Shipman 2004-06-28 5:58:46 PM||   2004-06-28 5:58:46 PM|| Front Page Top

#18 Can't hang? I understand. Til the next thread. Ta leme syntoma.
Posted by ed 2004-06-28 6:07:15 PM||   2004-06-28 6:07:15 PM|| Front Page Top

#19 It's a war, a guerrilla war, by any definition I can think of. Sure there's no opposition force that *in the open* can't be thoroughly and quickly crushed, but so what? In war you don't choose what kind of tactics your enemy will be using.

It's also meaningless to say that if you weren't restrained, you could finish it quickly with MOABS or whatever. True, if you weren't restrained you could nuke the whole of the planet while you're at it.

But military victories are meant to be a *tool* in the service of politics -- not vice versa. If something doesn't politically strengthen you in the conflict of wills against the enemy, you don't do it, regardless of whether militarily you can.

And you are welcome.
Posted by Aris Katsaris  2004-06-28 6:13:04 PM||   2004-06-28 6:13:04 PM|| Front Page Top

#20 ed> Nice Greek.
Posted by Aris Katsaris  2004-06-28 6:13:55 PM||   2004-06-28 6:13:55 PM|| Front Page Top

#21 History Channel is running tonight... Nazi Guerrillas... watched it. Bombs, blowing up railroads, electrical power, killing those who worked with the Allies... went on through 1948... three years after the war.

They are running a late rerun.
Posted by Sherry  2004-06-28 9:18:40 PM||   2004-06-28 9:18:40 PM|| Front Page Top

#22 Aris,

Our local newspaper, in observance of Memorial Day and the 60th Anniversary of D-Day, ran a series of war memories of the 'Greatest Generation'.

One person told how their brother, a local high school baseball star, got over to Germany in 1945 at the end of the war but in time for the Occupation.

One night in 1946, pulling guard duty, he was deliberately run into and crushed by a stolen truck driven by a bitter young anti-American German man.

The German was found guilty of murder and hung. Apparently it was pretty common in those first few years after the war.
Posted by JDB 2004-06-28 10:51:22 PM||   2004-06-28 10:51:22 PM|| Front Page Top

#23 Thanks for the info.
Posted by Aris Katsaris  2004-06-28 11:29:11 PM||   2004-06-28 11:29:11 PM|| Front Page Top

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