Yugoslavia and Iraq; Peas in a pod?

Doug Muir has an excellent post at Tacitus.org about German occupation policies in Yugoslavia between 1941 and 1944. He draws a number of interesting parallels between the German situation and the American, as well as several contrasts.

This was effective. By the middle of 1944, the partisans held about a quarter of the country, and had made about another quarter into no-go areas for the Axis. Germans didn’t dare to enter these areas except briefly and in force; and as soon as they left, the partisans flowed in like water behind them. Months before the Red Army arrived in Yugoslavia, Tito was already running much of the country.

The partisans actually recaptured several of Yugoslavia’s major cities from the Axis. For instance, they took over the port of Split — a city of about 200,000 people — for several weeks in the autumn of 1943. Eventually the Germans had to bring Erwin Rommel in to dislodge them. (The Allies had finally kicked the Deutsch Afrika Corps out of North Africa, so Rommel was at loose ends just then.)

Read the rest if you have any interest in military history and somewhat stretched analogies. Posts like this almost make me forget that the insipid Bird Dog now dominates Tacitus.org, making it nigh on unreadable. The world needs thoughtful conservatives. While Tacitus posted regularly, we had one; he supported the war and supported Bush, but understood the magnitude of the administration failures in Iraq. Bird Dog can’t do much more than spout wingnut received wisdom with somewhat more depth than the typical instapundit post.