America made a mistake de-Baathifying Iraq's government by failing to follow lessons of occupied West Germany after World War II? I don't think that is close to being right.
Huh:
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.
Saying America made a mistake in Iraq because it failed to follow the cancellation of de-Nazification in Germany after World War II ignores that Germany had no Nazi insurrection to ease that path and reduce the risks of putting defeated Nazis in the bureaucracy. Iraq had a Baathist insurgency that made putting Baathists in the government pretty much American-organized infiltration.
Germans after World War II had a foreign enemy they greatly feared wanted more revenge--the USSR. That made rising up against the Americans and other Western allies rather suicidal given that those Western conquerors were all that stood between the Red Army and the Rhine.
Sunni Arabs feared Shia and Kurdish Iraqis--now in charge as the majorities--who wanted revenge. Should we have made their liberation pointless by keeping the Sunni Arab Baathist torturers and oppressors in charge? Those we liberated from Saddam were rightly in no mood to be nice to their former oppressors when the oppressors were trying to return to power (See: The Price of De-Baathification" (Posted August 12, 2003) in that recovered post of August 2003 posts from the old site).
I believe the spring 2004 joint Sunni al Qaeda and Iran-backed Shia Sadrist uprisings would have been much worse if "former" Baathists had been in the government and security forces.
The
Shias and Kurds would have felt betrayed by lack of de-Baathification
and the Sunni Arabs would have had Baathist people--who'd see a chance
to regain full control to protect themselves from deserved revenge by
former victims--in charge of combat units. As it was, half of the new
Iraqi units collapsed. I suspect more would have collapsed without
de-Baathification and some would have started fighting us. Could we have
withstood that kind of uprising?
Not having experienced Sunni Arabs in the Iraqi government hurt governance. But the alternative of keeping them in positions of power had multiple problems. And we did get past whatever anger our actions had in promoting Sunni Arab insurgency. Lord, overthrowing the centuries-long Sunni Arab dominance over the Shia wasn't enough to inspire insurgency?
The Sunni tribal Arabs finally came to fear the ISIL invaders who had largely absorbed the Baathist resistance and Iran's Shia puppets more than America. That common enemy led to the Awakening and the Sunni Arab tribal defection to the Coalition. That led to Iraq's government relaxing de-Baathification.
This Sunni Arab support for the Surge offensive bolstered by additional American troops paid off. Both al Qaeda and the Sadrists were fought and defeated. Before that whack with the clue bat, there was no friendship to be had among Baathists by handing out jobs. Iraqi government victory enabled reincorporating Sunni Arabs into Iraq. And even that was shaky given the success of the ISIL offensive in the first half of 2014 across Iraq and Syria.
Perhaps the de-Baathification went deeper than what was proper--and what I wanted--but the new Iraqi government led by the majority Shias implemented the deeper de-Baathification--not America. And even if a mistake--which I don't concede given the other factors--it surely demonstrates that the Shias would have been angry with America about no de-Baathification. What problems would have flowed from that belief that liberation from Saddam was a farce of "new boss same as the old boss" policies?
Oh, and for all the complaints that America didn't have a plan for Iraq unlike the extensive planning for post-war Germany, this section by the author is funny:
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. [emphasis added]Huh. After years of planning a major piece of how to deal with the defeated society and government, it was horribly wrong.
Also, the New York Times said we had extensive planning for Iraq. Sadly, our planning assumptions also didn't work out when we saw what we had on the ground and we had to adapt. We did to defeat a series of enemies fighting us. Which even the author who claimed the war was a "fiasco" had to return to and explain away the success as the result of a so-called "gamble."
At this point I'd be remiss not to mention how President Obama and Vice President Biden boasted of their success in Iraq. We won. Really.
Examining any victory too closely makes it look like defeat, eh?
And good Lord, if you take a broader view than the de-Nazification issue, are you really going to contrast America's post-Iraq War situation with the success of post-World War II that the anti-war Left made to undermine our fight in Iraq?
As it turns out, I shouldn't have been generous in assuming the anti-war account of the smooth post-World War II occupation was accurate.
That was always a hole in my education. I knew that things were rough in Europe after World War II, but basically it was the interlude between World War II and the Cold War. Even my post-World War II European history education skipped over the end of the 1940s for the most part.
So it has been with some horror that I have been reading Savage Continent by Keith Lowe. It is honestly numbing in the horrors of the post-war in failed plans, hatreds erupting that led to new slaughters and ethnic cleansing, hunger, and political violence ...It was painful to read. There was shame enough to go around. No wonder it is so easy to skip over this period between periods.
But the point is that compared to Europe after World War II, our post-war occupation of Iraq was friggin' brilliant. Sure, the scale was far less. But the fact is, but for the Iranian, Syrian, and al Qaeda invasion of Iraq after Saddam's regime was destroyed, the Iraq post-war would have gone pretty smoothly. Remember, Europe was not invaded right after the fall of Hitler's regime. Yet still it was a horror show.
Really? The post-World War II model applies to Iraq?
As for the reality of de-Baathification, it wasn't that harsh initially and was relaxed as early as September 2023 (in that September 30th post at the top of the salvage post from the old site). It was done in a way I thought made sense rather than being too harsh given the situation (Find this post, "“De-Baathification” (Posted April 24, 2004), in that giant salvage of April 2004 posts from the old site). You can't take the current situation and assume that changing the policies that got us here would have improved rather than wrecked the path to today.
UPDATE: Eric's thorough review of issues around the Iraq War (that I have only belatedly read) includes commentary that moots the idea that we should not have removed Baathists from positions of responsibility.
One, the UN wanted accountability for Saddam's crimes through the Baath Party. And two, American law mandating a democratic Iraq rather makes keeping the former oppressors and murder in positions of authority extremely counter-productive.
UPDATE: One thing I forgot to mention that intensified the need for de-Baathification was that Shias had reason to be suspicious of American motives after America let Saddam brutally suppress post-Desert Storm Shia uprisings in the south in 1991.
We had good reason to
oppose a pro-Iran uprising, of course. But it left a mark when we were serious about overthrowing the Saddam regime in 2003.
NOTE: TDR Winter War of 2022 coverage continues here.
NOTE: I'm adding updates on the Last Hamas War in this post.
