OK, Neocon, put "could" in there and, in view of the striking and important dissimilarities, I still stand by my assessment that it is "simplistic" to state, as you did, that:
My sole point in invoking Japan and Germany was to say that it is possible to establish democracy in Iraq, not to say that it is all the same.
I believe that in your desire to find justifications and hope, you're taking two dissimilar things, finding some immaterial similarities, and then concluding that those similarities, ipso facto, are predictive of outcomes that depend on material similarities. You may ultimately be right about the outcome in Iraq, but if you are it won't be because the facts and circumstances in Germany were predictive of the outcome in Iraq. |
