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Originally Posted by jorgelito
Germany and Japan are interesting examples:
A large part of their success lay in the fact that we continued to occupy them to help guide their fledgling democracies and contributed to building their political institutions. We basically baby sat them until they were able to stand on their own. Plus, I believe they had less difficulty with insurgencies.
I believe Iraq would be better off and would have had an easier time if we had 500,000 peace keepers and administrators helping them along instead of this half-assed effort.
The main difference is that at least Japan and Germany (in general) had stability whereas Iraq is still kind of chaotic.
Maybe a Marshall Plan for Iraq (and Afghanistan while we're at it)?
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Perfect. That's exactly what I was thinking. Japan and Germany were totally united during WW2 (I mean germany was united, and Japan was united). They were not countries where the people were at odds with the government. When they lost they were occupied by huge amounts of troops from many different countries. Before WW2, Japan knew stability, and before WW1 and in the breif time before WW2 Germany knew stability. Iraq simply is not this way. Saddam was hated by many Iraqi peoples (in other words they learned not to trust their government).
Iraq will only succede with the combined help of many many nations. If we were to get support from the UN or some major nations like Russia, Germany, France, or Italy, it would be more likely that they'd come out of it a strong democracy. Also location must be taken to mind. Germany was a part of Europe, surrounded by budding democracies. Iraq is surrounded by Iran (Islamic Republic), Kuwait (nominal constitutional monarchy), Saudi Arabia (monarchy), Jordan (constitutional monarchy), Syria (republic under military regime since March 1963), and Turkey (the only democracy). Just something to think about.