WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Leaving Iraq now would be the same as handing postwar Germany back to the Nazis, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in a column published on Sunday, as retired U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton called Rumsfeld incompetent and urged him to resign. "Turning our backs on postwar Iraq today would be the modern equivalent of handing postwar Germany back to the Nazis," Rumsfeld wrote in an essay published in The Washington Post on the third anniversary of the start of the Iraq war. He said "the terrorists" in Iraq were attempting to stoke sectarian tension and spark civil war, but that they must be "watching with fear" the progress in the country over the past three years. "The terrorists seem to recognize that they are losing in Iraq. I believe that history will show that to be the case," Rumsfeld said.

But in an opinion piece published on Sunday in the New York Times, Eaton said Rumsfeld had proven himself "not competent to lead our armed forces" and therefore "must step down." "First, his failure to build coalitions with our allies from what he dismissively called 'old Europe' has imposed far greater demands and risks on our soldiers in Iraq than necessary. Second, he alienated his allies in our own military, ignoring the advice of seasoned officers and denying subordinates any chance for input," Eaton said. "In sum, he has shown himself incompetent strategically, operationally and tactically, and is far more than anyone else responsible for what has happened to our important mission in Iraq," Eaton said. Eaton, who was in charge of training Iraqi military forces from 2003 to 2004, said President George W. Bush should replace Rumsfeld with someone like Sen. Joseph Lieberman (news, bio, voting record), a Connecticut Democrat, who could "repair fissures that have arisen both between parties and between uniformed men and the Pentagon big shots."