It is worth emphasizing again that Iraq in the summer of 2003 differed infundamental ways from Germany or Japan in the fall of 1945. Both Germany andJapan prior to their defeat at the hands of the United States and its allies hadbeen advanced modern states with populations that were almost completelyhomogeneous, in ethnic if not religious terms. At the end of the war, the Naziand imperial Japanese regimes had been comprehensively defeated and were by andlarge discredited in the eyes of their people; in spite of some fears to thecontrary, in neither country did former regime elements or sympathizers attemptto wage guerrilla warfare against the victorious occupiers. The primary tasksfacing the occupation authorities were therefore political and economicreconstruction, rather than the provision or maintenance of security. And thesetasks were themselves greatly facilitated by the institutional structures thatwere available for salvage from the wreckage of the relatively developed Germanand Japanese states and economies.

In the case of Iraq, by contrast, what had once been one of the most advancedcountries of the Arab Middle East had been devastated and rendered virtuallydysfunctional by some forty years of tyrannical and incompetent government. Muchmore damage was done by Saddam Hussein to his own country during this time thanby all coalition military operations from 1991 to 2003. Furthermore, Iraq wasfar from being a homogeneous nation. Cobbled together originally by the Britishout of three provinces of the old Ottoman Empire, Iraq had profound ethniccleavages – notably, between Arabs and the large Kurdish minority in thenorth. Most critically, however, it was religiously divided between Sunni andShi'ite Muslims, the latter making up some 60 percent of the population –a fact of paramount political importance given the fact that Saddam's regime hadbeen sustained largely by the support of the Sunni Arab minority. TheSunni–Shia split was also a profound one, with its roots in an antagonismgoing back to the first century of the Muslim faith. Finally, it is alsoimportant to note the persisting role in Iraqi society and politics of tribalgroupings. As we shall see, a belated grasp of the role of the tribes,particularly in the Sunni Arab rural areas, by American military commanderscontributed in a decisive way to the turnaround in American fortunes in Iraq onthe watch of General David Petraeus.