Strategy and Tactics

“Bremer, a historian by training, then reached over to his desk for a thick briefing book that laid out detailed timelines for the development of each Iraqi ministry. He pointed out a chart that he consulted more than any other: “MILESTONES: Iraq and Germany.” It laid out the handover of state institutions during the 1945-52 occupation of Germany, side by side with corresponding plans for Iraq over a more compressed period. That way, Bremer said, he could “keep track of where we are versus Germany.” The U.S. occupation embraced that model so completely that officials lifted whole passages from Marshall Plan-era documents in designing the future of Iraq — once forgetting, in a section dealing with currency, to change “Reichsmark” to “dinar.”
[…]
“Americans must begin to penetrate that silence by reckoning with some grim realities about the Iraqi endgame. The first is that there is no prospect of “winning” in Iraq, at least none that even remotely resembles the administration’s rhetoric. The German model has become part of what Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel, a Republican critic of the war, has called the “grand illusion” of Iraqi progress. Indeed, far from following the path of America’s postwar triumph in Germany, the administration’s approach on the ground is closely tracking one of America’s greatest foreign policy follies: Vietnamization.” [Source : Endgame - How Will We Know When We Can Finally Leave? by Michael Hirsh (Washington Post)]

Iraq is nothing like Germany during WWII and yet, this is the model they are using over there… in a highly compressed format, of course — meaning, speeded up (for television?). The differences between WWII and this war are vast. This administration is even more deluded than I thought possible. The rest of the above article is so good, I was tempted to quote the whole thing.

[Tip of the Hat to: American Amnesia]