Arabs, Nazis, and de-Nazification

Submitted by Michael Greengard (Israel), Jan 31, 2006 at 13:47

I think you have left out some very important facts. Merely defeating Nazism on the battlefield would not have been enough. Had the Nazis been permitted to run in a free election immediately after VE day, they probably would have won.

What happened after the Nazis were defeated was that Germany was militarily occupied. The leading Nazis were either put in jail or labor camps, or at a minimum excluded from any positions of leadership or influence.

The schools were closely supervised to make sure no Nazi messages were being taught. Even the cafes were scrutinized to make sure that no Nazi songs were being sung. In a word, Germany was forcibly de-Nazified - in effect, brainwashed. All this was done ruthlessly, with absolutely no regard for the Germans' civil rights.

If you want to democratize the Arabs, that's what it's going to take. The situation is even worse now, because after WWII there were no global forces beyond Allied reach helping Nazi resistance, whereas there are quite a few such forces ready to help Arab anti-democratic resistance now (as in Iraq), including within the Western countries themselves. If the US is not willing to do this, and it clearly is not, there is no use trying to convert the Arabs to democracy; the result will just be the same as in the Palestinian Authority, Algeria, Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt, etc. The US will become demoralized, just like in Iraq, and democracy will unjustifiably be regarded as discredited.

Maybe the best policy is to quarantine the Arabs and have no commerce or relations with them. Let them go back to the level of civilization they would have without help from the West. Then the only people they will be able to harm will be themselves.

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