Iraq better than WWII

From dKosopedia

Category: Iraq

The Urban Legend

Tale: Iraq under US led control has come further in six months than Germany did in seven years or Japan did in nine years following WWII. Military deaths from fanatic Nazi's, and Japanese numbered in the thousands and continued for over three years after WWII victory was declared.

Status: False

One line rebuttal: the total number of post-conflict American combat casualties in WWII, Haiti, and the two Balkan cases was ZERO

Source: Several e-mails have been circulating describing Iraq's "advances" under US occupation and comparing it to WWII's post war period which is described as as chaotic or worse than Iraq's.

Snopes: This particular e-mail entitled Did You Know This? managed to appear in Snopes Urban Legends pages. This particular assertion about WWII similarities is not disputed by Snopes, who says These types of items are generally impossible to categorize with a single truth value because they typically contain a mixture of fact, opinion, subjective statements, inaccuracies, and literally true but often misleading claims.

Investigation:The tale builds on then National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld declarations such as 1945 through 1947 was an especially challenging period. Germany was not immediately stable or prosperous. SS officers—called 'werewolves'—engaged in sabotage and attacked both coalition forces and those locals cooperating with them—much like today's Baathist and Fedayeen remnants.

The asserion has been proved false by several scholars, including Daniel Benjamin, a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. In an article titled Condi's Phony History Mr. Daniel writes: The Rice-Rumsfeld depiction of the Allied occupation of Germany is a farrago of fiction and a few meager facts. Werwolf tales have been a favorite of schlock novels, but the reality bore no resemblance to Iraq today. ..the Nazis began creating Werwolf as a resistance organization in September 1944. In practice, Werwolf amounted to next to nothing. The mayor of Aachen was assassinated on March 25, 1945, on Himmler's orders.. but it happened before the May 7 Nazi surrender at Reims... There was no major campaign of sabotage. There was no destruction of water mains or energy plants worth noting. The Army history records that while there were the occasional anti-occupation leaflets and graffiti, the GIs had reason to feel safe...

It's hard to understand exactly what Rumsfeld was saying, but if he meant that the Nazi resisters killed Americans after the surrender, this would be news. According to America's Role in Nation-Building: From Germany to Iraq, a new study by former Ambassador James Dobbins, who had a lead role in the Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo reconstruction efforts, and a team of RAND Corporation researchers, the total number of post-conflict American combat casualties in Germany—and Japan, Haiti, and the two Balkan cases—was zero.