On the question of how postwar Iraq should be governed and by whom, retired US Army general Wesley Clark has a nice editorial in the Washington Post. We shouldn’t get our hopes up that reconstructing Iraq will be as easy as reconstructing Japan.

Japan was not at odds with itself. It possessed the raw material for postwar reconstruction: an educated, industrious population; some surviving infrastructure; and modern industrial experience. Imperial Japan was also largely free of the problems of large, restive minorities... Defeat, when it came, was palpable, complete and unquestioned... Literacy was high, and the culture valued hard work and discipline... Almost none of those conditions will be present in post-Saddam Iraq.

This certainly dovetails with what I know of modern Japanese history. (And while I can’t claim to know the Mideast the way I know Japan, what I do know on that score certainly dovetails as well.)

Nor should we be looking for another MacArthur:

We have many highly capable, well-educated generals... but none of them alone can “do a MacArthur” and shouldn’t try. The search for such a figure is escapism, a desire to turn over responsibilities to someone, give him a title — and few resources — and hope the problems go away.

General Clark is a former c-in-c of US Southern Command and a former Supreme Allied Commander Europe, so he ought to know whereof he speaks. It’s years since I read William Manchester’s American Caesar. I should dig it out again.