Tonight on the history channel there are a couple of shows on. One is about the warring factions of Iraq, Neither show has a POLICTICAL AGENDA, just facts. The other show is about post WWII Germany and the Guerilla insurgents that attacked and killed allied troops after the war WAS OVER. The second one will be tough for people that think the rebuilding of Iraq is going to be easy, and there should be more progress then we see now.
*Cough* *anti-Bush crowd* *You know who you are, you are the ones that have been complaining about how much trouble there is in Iraq from insurgents*
Here is a chance to learn something about people, see long long it took to get Germany back on it's feet.

Thank you John, you've brought to this forum an idea, a big idea about humanity, that may go right over most dweller's heads. I related this concept many a moon ago to an elderman of the Shaughnessy clan, and we spoke of the notion that "the more things change, the more they stay the same" and introducing the hook, "because people are still people, no matter what surrounds them" and together, we achieved a wisdom (in casual conversation, no less) that was described variously, transcendant, brilliant, insane. The idea that man is man, parts is parts, no matter where you put them, threw a couple of relativists off their rockers. Absolutes could be introduced even under their system.

Thanks O'bliv, You're right people is people. There's nothing new under the sun.

On the other History channel, after those documnetaries, there was one on terrorism, dating back well over 2,000 years. Over 2,000 years of orginized terrorism from all over the world.

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Theres more than one History Channel? I watched the Documentry and then they one of the last if not the last "Band of Brothers" installment so I watched that [img]smile.gif[/img] </font>

I got a satelite I get history and history international.

I watched this one when it debuted a while back and agian the other night. I thought it showed just how different occupied Germany was when compared to occupied Iraq.

Aside from extreme cultural differences, it was noted that the German populace had largely lost the taste for war as they endured it for years where as the Iraqi's endured actual war for only 6 weeks. Also, many key German leaders, most imporantly Hitler were dead or captured. It took the Coalition months to catch Saddam and other high ranking loyalists, thus keeping the insurgents inspired and payyed. The difference that most striking and most important in recent times, is the part that Islamic fundamentalist play, there being no equivialent in occupied Germany. It seems these fundamentalists are now the money source for the Iraqi insurgency and former regime elements- ie. the Baathists, have turned to these Fundamentlists for support. A recent Time magazine has an excellent article on this as a matter of fact.

Another key difference is the level of planning that went into occupying Germany. It was planned many years in advanced and many contengincies were planned for. Where as in Iraq, it seems much of the occupation was planned months rather than years ahead and many contingencys were either wrong, neglected, or over-looked. Also, according to the HC documentry- a very very heavy hand was applied to any captured nazi insurgents. Most were executed summarily.

One thing is for sure, like in Germany it will take a long time for Iraq to get back on its feets, perhaps even longer. And the cost in blood from the insurgency will be much higher than was casued by nazi insurengce.

[ 06-29-2004, 09:59 PM: Message edited by: Chewbacca ]

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To be fair Chewey...one of the biggest reasons the leaders were not killed outright is because we didn't send in thousands of high level bombers to carpet bomb the whole country. We were trying to keep the civilian deaths to a minimum.

There are a lot of differences between Post War Germany and Iraq I agree..but there were reasonable causes for many of them.

As for the money issue...I think more can be done by the American and European governments to shut off the cash flow to these nutjobs. Freeze the assets being siphoned from mosqes and temples here in the US and Europe and prevent them from getting back to the middle east would be a good start.</font>