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[Editor's note: two posts follow.] 1. From: David Yelton [mailto:dyelton@gardner-webb.edu] I, too, would agree that the current administration's grade for accuracy in historical analogy would be somewhat less than stellar, my comment simply offers a citation to an excellent source on Nazi resistance to the Allies. On this I recommend: Biddiscombe, Perry. _Werwolf! The History of the National Socialist Guerrilla Movement, 1944-1946_. Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 1998. David Yelton Gardner-Webb University 2. From: Ronald Granieri [mailto:ronaldg@sas.upenn.edu] Dan Rogers is right on to point out the fallacies of the current simple-minded comparisons between postwar Iraq and postwar Germany. I would go even further, though, in pointing out that the German example, far from offering the comforting parallel suggested by Rumsfeld and Rice, offers even more reason for us to be careful about any predictions for the course or duration of an American occupation in Iraq. After all, even though in Germany the US and its allies were dealing with a war-weary population that, Werewolves aside, was generally willing to stop fighting and settle down to the tasks of reconstruction, it still took the better part of four years before any meaningful form of semi-autonomous national government for two-thirds of Germany could be constructed. Even that form of autonomy was limited, both politically and territorially, and that was even with the pressures for cooperation among the western powers and between the western powers and Germans encouraged by the Cold War. As Rogers' own excellent book reminds us, it was no small task to build a democratic political system with reputable parties and leaders, even in a state that had enjoyed (?) a republican form of government only twelve years earlier. Furthermore, the Federal Republic, for all its successes as an example of democratic capitalism, remained constrained by allied policy (and thousands of allied soldiers), as well as by the limits of "double containment" within the Cold War division of the world, for almost its entire existence. These lessons appears to be lost on most observers, both the Administration supporters who claim that Iraq will morph into a successful regime like the Federal Republic within months and those critics who think that an American departure will somehow allow the immediate blossoming of Iraqi democracy. Though I am not into predictions (which is why I became a historian and not a bookie), I think that the real crime of the American decision to go to war in Iraq was the failure of the responsible parties to be honest with either themselves or the public about what kind of investment in time, blood and treasure would be required to help rebuild Iraq long after the Saddam statues had been toppled. Ronald J. Granieri University of Pennsylvania
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