US Historians are so adorable when they talk about world history. <a href="http://www.plastic.com/article.html;sid=04/05/11/03020523;mode=flat">So, How Do We Get Out Of Iraq, Guys?</a> addresses a <iq>novel idea</iq> for withdrawing from Iraq, proposed by John Kiesling. It basically involves picking the guy we want to rule Iraq and pulling him into power by <iq>ced[ing] him tactical, positional victories while denying them to his competitors</iq>. Propping up dictators is something we've done dozens of times before --- usually we aren't directly in competition though. Usually, this is the game plan from the beginning, instead of a graceless exit strategy. The interesting point is that Kiesling also found an example in US history where he claims we already used this exact strategy: <bq>It was ugly when the Germans did it, and it didn't (I admit) prevent civil war in Greece after they left. Fortunately, outside encouragement of Iraqi civil war is more limited than it was in Greece in 1946.</bq> I really like the part about <iq>outside encouragement</iq> ... I'll give you three guesses which country was doing all of the encouraging ... and the first two don't count. After the end of WWII, Greece, naturally, was quite anxious to purge itself of fascist, and especially Nazi, influence. They were poised to elect an overwhelmingly socialist government with accompanying social reforms. Unfortunately for them, it would have decreased their viability as a US export market, so ... in a now-familiar pattern, we (the US) dumped tens of millions of dollars into their political system in supporting the Nazi-sympathizers the Greeks were so anxious to get out of power. The 'civil war' (as it's called here in the US) was the majority of the people who no longer wanted a fascist government reasserting themselves and finally ousting the government we implanted for them. The reason it's not an exact historic parallel is that we are playing the role of the Germans now ... and it's unlikely that anyone is going to come to our rescue in the way that the US helped out Nazi-sympathizers in 1946.