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The National Interest
Occupational Hazards
by Douglas Porch
. . . Now that Iraq is Saddamfrei, that shattered country is to benefit from a Bush Admin-istration reconstruction program that the New York Times called in mid-April "the most ambitious American effort to administer a country since the occupations of Japan and Germany at the end of World War II." This laudable objective became obscured in the first five weeks after the end of major fighting, when disagreements erupted in high places over the aims and timetables of U.S. policy in Iraq. The public watched a U.S. team stumble into the Mesopotamian huddle without a playbook. . . . The way things are shaping up, it appears that unless American administrators get a grip on the post-conflict disorder in Baghdad, Bush 41's Iraqi ulcer may become Bush 43's Middle Eastern hematoma. The smart money bet is that, for political reasons alone, the administration must get a handle on the situation. . . . It may be that the U.S. occupation of Iraq will go precisely as the President seems to envision. One can hope so. But it will do no good to imagine the post-1945 U.S. occupations of Germany and Japan as sources of inspiration. The more one mines these experiences, the less appropriate to the moment and downright non-transferable they look. Indeed, it may be that the best purpose of studying those experiences is to learn what not to do, for the course of true democracy in Germany and Japan after 1945 did not run smoothly. . . .