William Marina, a Research Fellow at the Independent Institute and Emeritus Professor of History at Florida Atlantic University Iraq: The Moon Is Down, Again!
Art, films and literature often offer insights that help to explain human situations perhaps better than does history. My favorite book on the integral interaction between occupiers and those being occupied, is John Steinbeck’s The Moon Is Down (1942), shortly thereafter made into a film starring Cedric Hardwicke, Lee J. Cobb and Henry Travers. I first saw the film in the 1950s, but it is not shown these days.
It is a story about the German invasion of a small town in Norway in 1940 and the developing reactions of the inhabitants as the Nazis seek to insure that the mines nearby continue to send coal to the Third Reich’s war machine. Readers this year may be tempted to replace the term “Norway” with “Iraq,” “coal” with “oil,” and “Germany” with the phrase “Coalition.” The story even has a “fifth column” Ahmed Chalabi-like character, who sets up the town for an easy occupation, imagining he will be dearly beloved by the people.
Read the rest here.