Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
USA Today
May 28, 2008
Pg. 11
During WWII, a U.S. airlift dropped food to West Germans starving amid a Soviet blockade. As in Germany then, democracy in Iraq today might come about more readily through a common sense of humanity than through military force, or by a heavy investment in nation-building.
By Andrei Cherny
Nearly three years after the invasion, it was clear that the occupation was failing. Little rebuilding had taken place in a country that had been showered with U.S. bombs. The economy was barely sputtering along. The security situation was growing worse. In the once-thriving capital, death from random violence and at the hands of armed gangs had become so pervasive that the city had acquired the nickname of "Crime Capital of the World." Worst of all — since the purpose of the occupation was, in the words of the top U.S. general on the ground, "to establish and maintain democracy — American style" in a country widely seen as culturally unfit for such a system — opinion polls showed that faith in the idea of democracy was plummeting to levels lower than those at war's end.
By most measures that mattered, by 1948 the occupation of Germany was a fiasco.
A swift turnabout
A year later, the modern Federal Republic of Germany was born with a constitution that, unlike that of the Weimar Republic, recognized "inviolable and inalienable human rights" such as equality before the law, the right to assemble and freedom of faith, press and speech. Today, Germany is the anchor of a free and prosperous Europe.
There is a grave danger in policymaking by historical analogy. Baghdad is not Berlin. The world of 2008 is not that of 1948. But the only way we have any sense of where we are going is in the context of where we have been. The manner in which America turned around the failing occupation of Germany is a lesson worth learning. Even if there is to be a massive withdrawal from Iraq in 2009 (something which is by no means certain) there will be — whether we like it or not — other military actions and other occupations by U.S. forces in the years ahead.
What happened in Germany in 1948 and 1949 was the Berlin Airlift — the massive U.S. and British effort to feed and supply West Berliners facing a Soviet blockade.
Before the airlift, many Americans had assumed that Germans would only embrace democracy once they felt secure from the looming Soviet military threat. Others — including those in the Truman administration who had authored the Marshall Plan and been shaped by the New Deal — believed that economic regeneration was a necessary precursor to political liberty.
"You cannot build real democracy in an atmosphere of distress and hunger," proclaimed American military governor Lucius Clay.
Echoes of these assessments are clearly heard in contemporary debates over Iraq. But in Germany, both eventually turned out to be wrong. Beginning shortly after the fall of the Third Reich, American social scientists conducted extensive survey research on German attitudes. In poll after poll, hungry Germans were asked whether they preferred a government that provided "economic security" or one that guaranteed "free elections, freedom of speech, press and religion."
Their answers were remarkably consistent: They chose the guarantee of a full stomach over freedom and democracy by 2 to 1 or more every time. In Berlin in April 1948, food won 64% to 29%. (When George Gallup, intrigued by the question, decided to take the same poll in the USA in May 1948, the results were that 12% of Americans chose "economic security" while 83% chose "freedom.")
'Freedom' first
Yet at the height of the blockade — when the security situation was its most dangerous and rations had been more severely limited than before — the numbers switched. In November 1948 — five months after the blockade began — Berliners, for the first time, chose "freedom" over "economic security" by 54% to 40%. What had been the "Crime Capital of the World" a year earlier saw, in spite of terrible hunger and deprivation, the lowest crime rates of any big city in the Western world.
The sense of common endeavor felt by Germans as they worked side-by-side with Americans in the mammoth Airlift operation, and their astounded gratitude to the American pilots who daily risked their lives and went out of their way to drop candy to Berlin's children, changed the psyche of the residents of what had been Adolf Hitler's capital.
Too often during this current occupation, Iraqis have been treated as mere pawns in a geopolitical game between the United States and the Baathists or the jihadists. We have surged our military forces and poured billions into the reconstruction but have made relatively little effort to win the hearts and minds of Iraqis by involving them in a common endeavor.
Instead, we've conveyed the sense that the United States is in Iraq for its own interests and not those of the Iraqis. We fight the terrorists there so we don't fight them here, we say.
That may or may not be so, but America's experience in Germany shows that democracies are built not by the force of arms or a flood of dollars, but by an active demonstration of faith in the common bonds of humanity.
Andrei Cherny, the co-editor of Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, is the author of The Candy Bombers: The Untold Story of the Berlin Airlift and America's Finest Hour.
May 28, 2008
Pg. 11
During WWII, a U.S. airlift dropped food to West Germans starving amid a Soviet blockade. As in Germany then, democracy in Iraq today might come about more readily through a common sense of humanity than through military force, or by a heavy investment in nation-building.
By Andrei Cherny
Nearly three years after the invasion, it was clear that the occupation was failing. Little rebuilding had taken place in a country that had been showered with U.S. bombs. The economy was barely sputtering along. The security situation was growing worse. In the once-thriving capital, death from random violence and at the hands of armed gangs had become so pervasive that the city had acquired the nickname of "Crime Capital of the World." Worst of all — since the purpose of the occupation was, in the words of the top U.S. general on the ground, "to establish and maintain democracy — American style" in a country widely seen as culturally unfit for such a system — opinion polls showed that faith in the idea of democracy was plummeting to levels lower than those at war's end.
By most measures that mattered, by 1948 the occupation of Germany was a fiasco.
A swift turnabout
A year later, the modern Federal Republic of Germany was born with a constitution that, unlike that of the Weimar Republic, recognized "inviolable and inalienable human rights" such as equality before the law, the right to assemble and freedom of faith, press and speech. Today, Germany is the anchor of a free and prosperous Europe.
There is a grave danger in policymaking by historical analogy. Baghdad is not Berlin. The world of 2008 is not that of 1948. But the only way we have any sense of where we are going is in the context of where we have been. The manner in which America turned around the failing occupation of Germany is a lesson worth learning. Even if there is to be a massive withdrawal from Iraq in 2009 (something which is by no means certain) there will be — whether we like it or not — other military actions and other occupations by U.S. forces in the years ahead.
What happened in Germany in 1948 and 1949 was the Berlin Airlift — the massive U.S. and British effort to feed and supply West Berliners facing a Soviet blockade.
Before the airlift, many Americans had assumed that Germans would only embrace democracy once they felt secure from the looming Soviet military threat. Others — including those in the Truman administration who had authored the Marshall Plan and been shaped by the New Deal — believed that economic regeneration was a necessary precursor to political liberty.
"You cannot build real democracy in an atmosphere of distress and hunger," proclaimed American military governor Lucius Clay.
Echoes of these assessments are clearly heard in contemporary debates over Iraq. But in Germany, both eventually turned out to be wrong. Beginning shortly after the fall of the Third Reich, American social scientists conducted extensive survey research on German attitudes. In poll after poll, hungry Germans were asked whether they preferred a government that provided "economic security" or one that guaranteed "free elections, freedom of speech, press and religion."
Their answers were remarkably consistent: They chose the guarantee of a full stomach over freedom and democracy by 2 to 1 or more every time. In Berlin in April 1948, food won 64% to 29%. (When George Gallup, intrigued by the question, decided to take the same poll in the USA in May 1948, the results were that 12% of Americans chose "economic security" while 83% chose "freedom.")
'Freedom' first
Yet at the height of the blockade — when the security situation was its most dangerous and rations had been more severely limited than before — the numbers switched. In November 1948 — five months after the blockade began — Berliners, for the first time, chose "freedom" over "economic security" by 54% to 40%. What had been the "Crime Capital of the World" a year earlier saw, in spite of terrible hunger and deprivation, the lowest crime rates of any big city in the Western world.
The sense of common endeavor felt by Germans as they worked side-by-side with Americans in the mammoth Airlift operation, and their astounded gratitude to the American pilots who daily risked their lives and went out of their way to drop candy to Berlin's children, changed the psyche of the residents of what had been Adolf Hitler's capital.
Too often during this current occupation, Iraqis have been treated as mere pawns in a geopolitical game between the United States and the Baathists or the jihadists. We have surged our military forces and poured billions into the reconstruction but have made relatively little effort to win the hearts and minds of Iraqis by involving them in a common endeavor.
Instead, we've conveyed the sense that the United States is in Iraq for its own interests and not those of the Iraqis. We fight the terrorists there so we don't fight them here, we say.
That may or may not be so, but America's experience in Germany shows that democracies are built not by the force of arms or a flood of dollars, but by an active demonstration of faith in the common bonds of humanity.
Andrei Cherny, the co-editor of Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, is the author of The Candy Bombers: The Untold Story of the Berlin Airlift and America's Finest Hour.