It tickles my brain in a strange way that the Americans did such a pissweak job of de-nazification after WWII (deliberately so in many ways) and it worked out great for the empire.
But after toppling Saddam, they did a much better job of removing every member of the Ba’ath party from civilian and military power, and it turned into a disaster.
I’ve been turning it over it my head, what was incompetence, what was deliberate, how these two distinct yet similar events played out. Was it simply a matter of the management of empire becoming less competent over time? Would full denazification have caused similar issues in postwar Germany (the experience of the GDR suggests not)?
Very interesting to think about.
I think “what did they want to achieve” is a nebulous thing. Mainly it seems like a mix of cynical MIC sickos and World Bank types out for pure profit contrasted with idiot hick neocons who genuinely thought they could turn this Arabic country they had no idea about into an “America in the Middle East” (made in the neocon image of what America should be of course), which is just absurd. It’s interesting to look at as a Marxist, people like Bremer who thought they could waltz in and rebuild a country through idealism which didn’t match up to the material reality of iraq.
Which isn’t to say there was a “right” way to invade and “rebuild” iraq. They should’ve left it the fuck alone.