Comments on: Christopher Coyne http://antiwar.com/radio/2008/05/24/christopher-coyne/ Interviews of foreign policy experts, writers and activists. Sat, 26 May 2012 22:42:19 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 By: Juan Cole’s Conveniently Partisan Intervention Issues « Antiwar.com Blog http://antiwar.com/radio/2008/05/24/christopher-coyne/comment-page-1/#comment-17001 Juan Cole’s Conveniently Partisan Intervention Issues « Antiwar.com Blog Tue, 23 Aug 2011 21:41:12 +0000 http://antiwar.com/radio/?p=370#comment-17001 [...] Democracy, describing why occupations do not work. It’s not because of this or that mistake; it is the nature of intervention. We can’t know local conditions better than the locals. We see this in every single [...] [...] Democracy, describing why occupations do not work. It’s not because of this or that mistake; it is the nature of intervention. We can’t know local conditions better than the locals. We see this in every single [...]

]]> By: redsaunas http://antiwar.com/radio/2008/05/24/christopher-coyne/comment-page-1/#comment-1165 redsaunas Wed, 28 May 2008 04:14:11 +0000 http://antiwar.com/radio/?p=370#comment-1165 9/10. But 'fraid I'm not buying the complete dismissal of the Marshall Plan. Yes, you can rebuild the physical structures, and if there's nobody to work in them you'll accomplish squat. But if the people are there, ready to go, and you rebuild the infrastructure, you will kickstart proceedings. (Contrast with what happened on the other side of the Iron Curtain. Instead of helping rebuild, the Soviets pretty much helped themselves to whatever wasn't nailed down, and rubbed salt into the wound by imposing their own tyranny on the 'liberated'.) The big difference between Iraq and either Germany or Japan was that in the latter two you had people with experience of running modern, unified, industrial nations, both in public and private enterprise, and they were just waiting for the rubble to be cleared so they could get on with it. In Iraq, a pre-modern, semi-tribal society held together by fear and a few bits of string even before the invasion, the 'reconstruction' was doomed before it began. 9/10.

But ‘fraid I’m not buying the complete dismissal of the Marshall Plan.

Yes, you can rebuild the physical structures, and if there’s nobody to work in them you’ll accomplish squat.

But if the people are there, ready to go, and you rebuild the infrastructure, you will kickstart proceedings.

(Contrast with what happened on the other side of the Iron Curtain. Instead of helping rebuild, the Soviets pretty much helped themselves to whatever wasn’t nailed down, and rubbed salt into the wound by imposing their own tyranny on the ‘liberated’.)

The big difference between Iraq and either Germany or Japan was that in the latter two you had people with experience of running modern, unified, industrial nations, both in public and private enterprise, and they were just waiting for the rubble to be cleared so they could get on with it.

In Iraq, a pre-modern, semi-tribal society held together by fear and a few bits of string even before the invasion, the ‘reconstruction’ was doomed before it began.

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