Thread title edited to AVOID SHOUTING = Dennis
Hummmm...............
Posted for fair use......
APRIL 5, 2024
COMMENTARY
“By nightfall, you’ll have driven 30,000 to 50,000 Baathists underground. And in six months, you’ll really regret this.” Such a warning from a local CIA station chief would cause most policymakers to reconsider their course of action. And yet, the U.S. authorities in Iraq ignored it, pressing ahead with their plan to remove members of the Baath party from positions of power.
In order to craft a de-Baathification process following the occupation of Iraq in 2003, the United States adopted policies that it claimed were based heavily on the denazification policies enacted in the American-occupied zone of West Germany to achieve the same goal. Members of the George W. Bush administration relied heavily on the analogy between the Baath and Nazi regimes and used this as part of their justification for both the invasion itself and the shape of their policies in the aftermath. Despite this, however, the de-Baathification program was badly thought out and badly implemented, proving to be hugely counterproductive for the security and prosperity of post-war Iraq — the United States neither replicated the successes nor avoided the mistakes of denazification.
The reason for this was not that nobody had done the research. On the contrary, the State Department and the CIA had, and their recommendations showed that they had understood the lessons of the German case — that removing every member of the party was unrealistic and would be severely detrimental to the operation of new state institutions. The problem was that they were ignored by the Department of Defense and the White House, who viewed their regional experts as “too soft” to properly remake Iraq. Those who were ultimately responsible for the failures of de-Baathification allowed bureaucratic infighting and overconfidence to undermine the goal of a peaceful and democratic Iraq. While de-Baathification may still have not achieved its goals had the German case been better taken into account, particularly given the myriad ethnic, religious, and political schisms that rocked Iraq following the end of the Baath regime, the Department of Defense missed opportunities to avoid mistakes that had already been made in the 1940s. The lessons from history had been learned — just not by the right people.
The Analogy
The reconstruction of West Germany and Japan following the end of World War II had become the epitome of success in post-conflict nation-building within American circles, and some American officials had hoped to replicate these successes from very early on in the planning stages of the Iraq invasion. Both Bush and senior figures in his administration also directly used analogies between Baath Iraq and Nazi Germany. In a speech in May 2003, shortly after the American intervention began, Bush drew directly on this: “Some believe that democracy in the Middle East is unlikely, if not impossible. … These same arguments have been heard before in other times, about other people. After World War II, many doubted that Germany and Japan, with their histories of autocratic rule and aggressive armies, could ever function as free and peaceful societies.”
Paul Bremer, the architect of de-Baathification, also explicitly made the connection in his memoirs: “I thought it was absolutely essential to make it clear that the Ba’athist ideology … had to be extirpated finally and completely from society, much as the American government decided to completely extirpate Nazism from Germany at the end of the Second World War.”
On the face of it, the analogy seemed apposite. In both cases, the United States aimed to remove an authoritarian regime that had committed considerable crimes against humanity, replacing it with a friendly liberal-democratic government. The Nazi and Baath parties had a similar structure, with a wide membership based on the associated privileges of belonging and a small inner circle of highly placed members running the party. Charles-Phillipe David and Karine Premont arguethat the analogy was a logical choice given U.S. predispositions — World War II was a point of reference close to the hearts of the neoconservatives in the Bush administration, and the U.S. success at nation-building in Germany was precisely the kind of positive example needed in order to muster public support for what was, in essence, a war of choice.
Other scholars inject notes of skepticism. Thomas Maulucci argues that the German example was predominantly used as an excuse to “give the impression that an occupation strategy had been thought out.” Aysegul Zeren contends that the United States used the analogy disingenuously in order to ensure that “getting rid of the Baathists became as morally right as getting rid of the Nazis.” And Thomas Ricks points out that the analogy gave the Bush administration a tactical advantage in that anyone opposing their Iraq policies could be painted as “the moral equivalent of Neville Chamberlain: fools at best, knaves at worst.”
The Implementation: Denazification
After the collapse of the Third Reich in 1945, the Allies and the German people faced the arduous task of rebuilding Germany while eradicating Nazism. The initial phase of denazification focused on dissolving Nazi organizations, dismissing Nazis from administrative roles, and interning potential war criminals. However, it was difficult to ascertain the extent to which many individuals had collaborated with the Nazi regime. Large parts of the population had been forced to support the Nazi war effort, including through property confiscations and mandatory conscription, and these people could all therefore be charged with collaboration in some form or another. Although many had clearly attempted to benefit from their dealings with the Nazi regime, many others had understandably concluded that collaboration was the only way to survive. Determining the extent of a person’s involvement was made harder by the lack of reliable documentation, as countless files and party membership lists had been destroyed during the war.
The U.S. military government thus decided to generate its own information through the Fragebogen, detailed 131-point questionnaires intended to identify the career and party membership details of every adult living in the U.S.-controlled zone. Special Branch personnel would use these to assign each individual to one of five classes, from major offenders (class I) to the exonerated (class V). However, over 45 million people had been involved in some way with the Nazi party or its affiliated organizations, and there was no guarantee that they would tell the truth about their participation. Those with money or influence could avoid submitting their questionnaire, while those in minor roles who dutifully completed it lost their jobs. This led to a widespread feeling among the German population that the United States was concentrating too much on eliminating small fry and not on punishing those who had committed serious crimes.
The implementation of denazification became increasingly lax, reflecting a growing view that the complete elimination of all former Nazis from professional life was unrealistic. The original idea had been that there would be enough non-Nazi personnel available in Germany to staff public offices. However, the reality was that most of these people had died or fled during the war, or were too weak to work following their suffering under the Nazi regime. The remaining healthy individuals started filling posts that they had no expertise in, while minor collaborators with skills and experience were dismissed. A spate of amnesties followed, and the denazification program was formally ended in March 1948. In May 1951, the Bundestag went further, adopting a law on the reintegration of Nazi officials into the civil service under Article 131 of the German constitution — all those who had lost their jobs, apart from major offenders and Gestapo agents, gained the right not only to be reemployed, but also to claim back pay for the time they had not been able to work. As John Herz aptly summarizes, “The process that had begun with wholesale incriminations turned in the direction of wholesale exemptions and then ended in wholesale exonerations.”
Continued......
Hummmm...............
Posted for fair use......
“Too Soft”: America’s Failure to Learn from Germany in Iraq - War on the Rocks
“By nightfall, you’ll have driven 30,000 to 50,000 Baathists underground. And in six months, you’ll really regret this.” Such a warning from a local CIA
warontherocks.com
“TOO SOFT”: AMERICA’S FAILURE TO LEARN FROM GERMANY IN IRAQ
EMMA SALISBURYAPRIL 5, 2024
COMMENTARY
“By nightfall, you’ll have driven 30,000 to 50,000 Baathists underground. And in six months, you’ll really regret this.” Such a warning from a local CIA station chief would cause most policymakers to reconsider their course of action. And yet, the U.S. authorities in Iraq ignored it, pressing ahead with their plan to remove members of the Baath party from positions of power.
In order to craft a de-Baathification process following the occupation of Iraq in 2003, the United States adopted policies that it claimed were based heavily on the denazification policies enacted in the American-occupied zone of West Germany to achieve the same goal. Members of the George W. Bush administration relied heavily on the analogy between the Baath and Nazi regimes and used this as part of their justification for both the invasion itself and the shape of their policies in the aftermath. Despite this, however, the de-Baathification program was badly thought out and badly implemented, proving to be hugely counterproductive for the security and prosperity of post-war Iraq — the United States neither replicated the successes nor avoided the mistakes of denazification.
The reason for this was not that nobody had done the research. On the contrary, the State Department and the CIA had, and their recommendations showed that they had understood the lessons of the German case — that removing every member of the party was unrealistic and would be severely detrimental to the operation of new state institutions. The problem was that they were ignored by the Department of Defense and the White House, who viewed their regional experts as “too soft” to properly remake Iraq. Those who were ultimately responsible for the failures of de-Baathification allowed bureaucratic infighting and overconfidence to undermine the goal of a peaceful and democratic Iraq. While de-Baathification may still have not achieved its goals had the German case been better taken into account, particularly given the myriad ethnic, religious, and political schisms that rocked Iraq following the end of the Baath regime, the Department of Defense missed opportunities to avoid mistakes that had already been made in the 1940s. The lessons from history had been learned — just not by the right people.
The Analogy
The reconstruction of West Germany and Japan following the end of World War II had become the epitome of success in post-conflict nation-building within American circles, and some American officials had hoped to replicate these successes from very early on in the planning stages of the Iraq invasion. Both Bush and senior figures in his administration also directly used analogies between Baath Iraq and Nazi Germany. In a speech in May 2003, shortly after the American intervention began, Bush drew directly on this: “Some believe that democracy in the Middle East is unlikely, if not impossible. … These same arguments have been heard before in other times, about other people. After World War II, many doubted that Germany and Japan, with their histories of autocratic rule and aggressive armies, could ever function as free and peaceful societies.”
Paul Bremer, the architect of de-Baathification, also explicitly made the connection in his memoirs: “I thought it was absolutely essential to make it clear that the Ba’athist ideology … had to be extirpated finally and completely from society, much as the American government decided to completely extirpate Nazism from Germany at the end of the Second World War.”
On the face of it, the analogy seemed apposite. In both cases, the United States aimed to remove an authoritarian regime that had committed considerable crimes against humanity, replacing it with a friendly liberal-democratic government. The Nazi and Baath parties had a similar structure, with a wide membership based on the associated privileges of belonging and a small inner circle of highly placed members running the party. Charles-Phillipe David and Karine Premont arguethat the analogy was a logical choice given U.S. predispositions — World War II was a point of reference close to the hearts of the neoconservatives in the Bush administration, and the U.S. success at nation-building in Germany was precisely the kind of positive example needed in order to muster public support for what was, in essence, a war of choice.
Other scholars inject notes of skepticism. Thomas Maulucci argues that the German example was predominantly used as an excuse to “give the impression that an occupation strategy had been thought out.” Aysegul Zeren contends that the United States used the analogy disingenuously in order to ensure that “getting rid of the Baathists became as morally right as getting rid of the Nazis.” And Thomas Ricks points out that the analogy gave the Bush administration a tactical advantage in that anyone opposing their Iraq policies could be painted as “the moral equivalent of Neville Chamberlain: fools at best, knaves at worst.”
The Implementation: Denazification
After the collapse of the Third Reich in 1945, the Allies and the German people faced the arduous task of rebuilding Germany while eradicating Nazism. The initial phase of denazification focused on dissolving Nazi organizations, dismissing Nazis from administrative roles, and interning potential war criminals. However, it was difficult to ascertain the extent to which many individuals had collaborated with the Nazi regime. Large parts of the population had been forced to support the Nazi war effort, including through property confiscations and mandatory conscription, and these people could all therefore be charged with collaboration in some form or another. Although many had clearly attempted to benefit from their dealings with the Nazi regime, many others had understandably concluded that collaboration was the only way to survive. Determining the extent of a person’s involvement was made harder by the lack of reliable documentation, as countless files and party membership lists had been destroyed during the war.
The U.S. military government thus decided to generate its own information through the Fragebogen, detailed 131-point questionnaires intended to identify the career and party membership details of every adult living in the U.S.-controlled zone. Special Branch personnel would use these to assign each individual to one of five classes, from major offenders (class I) to the exonerated (class V). However, over 45 million people had been involved in some way with the Nazi party or its affiliated organizations, and there was no guarantee that they would tell the truth about their participation. Those with money or influence could avoid submitting their questionnaire, while those in minor roles who dutifully completed it lost their jobs. This led to a widespread feeling among the German population that the United States was concentrating too much on eliminating small fry and not on punishing those who had committed serious crimes.
The implementation of denazification became increasingly lax, reflecting a growing view that the complete elimination of all former Nazis from professional life was unrealistic. The original idea had been that there would be enough non-Nazi personnel available in Germany to staff public offices. However, the reality was that most of these people had died or fled during the war, or were too weak to work following their suffering under the Nazi regime. The remaining healthy individuals started filling posts that they had no expertise in, while minor collaborators with skills and experience were dismissed. A spate of amnesties followed, and the denazification program was formally ended in March 1948. In May 1951, the Bundestag went further, adopting a law on the reintegration of Nazi officials into the civil service under Article 131 of the German constitution — all those who had lost their jobs, apart from major offenders and Gestapo agents, gained the right not only to be reemployed, but also to claim back pay for the time they had not been able to work. As John Herz aptly summarizes, “The process that had begun with wholesale incriminations turned in the direction of wholesale exemptions and then ended in wholesale exonerations.”
Continued......
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