Andrew Sullivan was the first person I read who discussed the idea of a war against Iraq. He was very enthusiastic and here's why.
He believed that Iraq could be democratized in the same way that Germany and Japan were democratized after World War Two.
I don't remember him mentioning that Germany and Japan had been beaten to a pulp after years of war. And here's another thing that might have been considered as well.
Educated Western readers tend to see the case of de-nazification in Germany and the complete rejection of Hitler's past by the Germans as something normal. But it is actually an exception with few if any parallels worldwide.
Japan, for example, is far less willing to admit the scale of its former misdeeds, and in Turkey the mainstream opinion is not ready even to accept the fact of Armenian genocide - probably, the first "modern" genocide.
Each case has its explanations, but one should realize: the total rejection of the recent past, German style, is by no means typical.
The inevitability of Kim revisionism, Andrei Lankov, Asia Times, May 4, 2011
Those countries which already had strong internal opposition to communist rule, like Poland, were the ones which were better able to adapt to post-communist life.
Where opposition was weak or ruthlessly suppressed - Russia, or East Germany perhaps - there's still for many a strong nostalgic pull back to the "good" old days
Mick Hartley, Kim Revisionism, June 09, 2011
