ST. LOUIS -- Military historians say that comparing the just-ended occupation of Iraq with the occupation of Germany and Japan after World War II is a matter of apples and oranges.
After all, they note:
Both Germany and Japan were devastated as well as defeated. In contrast, says James Davis of Washington University in St. Louis, "We raced through Iraq, and the government collapsed. I don't think the Iraqis felt the same degree of defeat."
Nobody, friend or foe, questioned the legitimacy of the occupations after WWII. And because Germany and Japan were universally reviled, neither country enjoyed neighbors like the Syrians, willing to help harry the occupiers.
When Germany and Japan collapsed, the Americans marched in as conquerors. "But in Iraq," says Davis, "a lot of Americans thought we'd be viewed as liberators."
In Iraq, the American invading force -- it peaked at 145,000 in April 2003 -- was just enough to win the war. But in WWII, the Americans rolled in more than enough soldiers to nail down the peace. On the day the war ended in Germany, the United States had 1.6 million soldiers there. True, that force quickly shrank. But as 1945 rolled into 1946, the Army in Germany still mustered 600,000 soldiers.
American planning for the post-WWII occupations began three years before the war ended. (The planners even set up special teams to track down and safeguard art treasures.) In contrast, the thinking about Iraq held that American soldiers would be welcomed by cooperative Iraqis who would, in effect, police themselves. When that notion soured, the Americans in Iraq had to plan on the fly.
In Germany and Japan, the Americans quickly got local cooperation. Penn State political scientist Michael Bernhard has written about the German occupation for the Naval Postgraduate College. He notes that in Germany, the United States quickly rebuilt the civilian government, starting at the local level. But in Iraq, Bernhard said by phone, "We still haven't held an election." As for Japan: The Americans let the emperor keep his throne. The emperor then cooperated with the Americans. And if the emperor cooperated, everybody cooperated.
In 1945, many Germans and Japanese still had memories of living under democratic government -- a memory missing in Iraq. What's more, Germany was a Western nation, "culturally much closer to us than Iraq," says Davis. He adds: "The Germans are organizers and bureaucrats. They know how to make things run. That doesn't seem to be a characteristic of the Middle East." And although Japan is an Asian nation, the Japanese had long accommodated and even adapted Western ways of doing things.
After WWII, the American proconsuls wore uniforms, symbols of military might. Gen. Lucius Clay ran the U.S. zone in Germany, and Gen. Douglas MacArthur all but ruled Japan. In Iraq, the top man was a civilian, L. Paul Bremer. "Maybe a military governor got more respect," Davis muses. Today, a statue of MacArthur still looms over the Japanese-American air base at Atsugi, where MacArthur landed in 1945. Davis asks, "Do you think there's going to be a statue of Bremer in Baghdad?"
Nobody in Germany or Japan had a motive for challenging the Americans. Davis said the Japanese "had respect for the conqueror, and they were sick of the war." As for Germany, he said, "They were able to get rebuilt, rewired, re-watered. I can't imagine anybody in Germany interested in destroying that."
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