[lbo-talk] Iraq war "clearer" to Americans than WW 2

[Michael Pugliese]

SOVIET UNION
Iraqi tactics in the current war — forcing civilians into harm's way, 
executing innocents who seek refuge — have confirmed the malevolence of 
their regime, and so Americans seem puzzled by any Iraqi resistance to 
their liberation. It may perhaps be typically American to expect others to 
greet our mighty righteousness with gratitude, but there is a larger 
contradiction at work: we see dictatorships as simultaneously all-powerful 
and yet completely brittle.
Above all, we tend to assume that if a regime uses mass terror, the 
population must be opposed to it — why else is there a need to terrorize 
people? We find it difficult to appreciate the coexistence of brutal 
coercion with broad elements of allegiance — as was the case, for example, 
in Stalin's Soviet Union. Nor do we understand the social and psychological 
depth attained by long-lasting dictatorships, how they shape the habits and 
identities even of their internal enemies.
Dictatorships create a shadowy world. An adept dictator, rather than wait 
for the C.I.A. to recruit malcontents within his regime, organizes a phony 
conspiracy against himself. And then he hangs anyone who dares to respond, 
in the ministerial corridors for others to see. Those contemplating revolt 
cannot distinguish between a solicitation to defect that is genuine and one 
that is a trap.
Outsiders are suspect. As one captured Soviet official told German 
interrogators during World War II: "We have badly mistreated our people; in 
fact so bad that it was almost impossible to treat them worse. You Germans 
have managed to do that. In the long term, the people will choose between 
the two tyrants the one who speaks their language. Therefore, we will win 
the war."
To me, the Iraqis living under dictatorship and now caught in its violent 
overthrow appear less puzzling than Americans who talk of building 
democracies in the Arab world while disparaging government institutions, 
taxes and public programs at home.
Steven Kotkin directs the Russian studies program at Princeton University.
<URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/05/arts/05RISE.html >
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Michael Pugliese