"The influx of 21,500 surge troops, combined with the cooperation of 90,000 Sons of Iraq, reduced the violence [sectarian war]significantly. But the tactics that have been employed have contributed little toward building a stable, unified Iraqi nation, according to Simon [author of "The Price of the Surge", published in Foreign Affairs May 2008]. Instead, the surge has inadvertently strengthened the three modern horsemen of Middle Eastern apocalypse: tribalism, warlordism, and sectarianism." Wilson Quarterly, "Unmasking the Surge" (Summer 2008].
The fourth horse, is galloping corruption. The bent refusal to accept facts and the thinking that every dollar is an open invitation to deception, distorts the media, the text of the Quoran, and the effort to implement any solution short of genocide. Killing everyone is now possible, and it is "final", but it has NEVER been a "solution", and is not now.
HOW MANY DOES IT TAKE TO OCCUPY A HOSTILE COUNTRY? In WWII, the Germans marched around the Maginot Line, and six weeks later, France agreed to an armistice. In 1941, the French leaders under Petain expected Britain to suerrender quickly, and they maneuvered to curry favor with the Nazis to boost their own standing in a Europe dominated by Hitler.
ReplyDeleteThe occupying Germans put fewer than 40,000 unfit and overage occupation officers to administer all of France. These officers spent most of their time looting--taking more than 55% of France's economic output, which was higher per capita at the outset of the occupation than that of the German nation.
By 1943, the Germans were taking, and being given, more than 500 million francs per diem, and over 650,000 French laborers were conscripted into factory work -- 10% of the labor force virtually enslaved.
Compare, 25 years earlier, France demanded 132 billion gold marks in WWI reparations from Germany. From 1923 through 1931 the Weimar Republic paid 50 billion deutessche marks, or 83% of one year's gross domestic product.
France's collaborist Vichy government paid Germany much more, and much faster: From 1940-1944, 479 billion francs. The population remained remarkably passive with Marshal Petain, a war hero, at the head of the country.
According to the economists, Occhino and White of Rutgers and Oosterlink of Univ.L. de Bruxelles, "Germany secured a massive and perhaps unparalleled transfer of resources from France" to finance its attempted conquest of the world.
In 1940, France had a population of approximately 40 million, with a tradition of arms. Area
543,965 square kilometers
(210,026 square miles).
An April 2008 estimate of the total Iraqi population is 28 million. 1.8 million Iraqis are living in neighboring countries, and 1.6 million are displaced internally. Nearly 100,000 Iraqis flee to Syria and Jordan each month.
The US Department of State gives the area as 434,934 square kilometers, mainly consisting of desert. The total size is comparable to the state of California, or the country of Paraguay.
The point is, even the ideologically bent Nazis rushing into France and occupying a people historically hostile to German subordination, were able to "pacify" a nation much larger and more complex in almost every way than Iraq.
The US Congress must demand an accounting from Bush-Cheney-Rove and Rumsfeld and Rice. Start with "What was The Plan?" Either the Bush cadre is incompetent or it is corrupt, but in either case, they destroyed two countries, and reparation is necessary.