Considering the war that came in 1914 and the vindictive peace it produced, giving us Lenin, Stalin
Amazing in its staggering, probably deliberate ignorance of most basic history. Lenin came to power during WWI. And the harsh peace that ended Russia's involvement in the war was made by Germany, not the West.
The clear problem with how WWI ended was not a harsh peace, but that the west was unable to finish the job like they did the second go-round. If you look at the horrors inflicted upon Germany and Japan in WWII (necessary horrors), they were FAR more drastic than Versailles. The countries were basicaly obliterated. Yet now Germany and Japan are peaceful democracies (there's that nasty D-word again) and are demilitarized.
So that simple bit of history destroys the anti-democracy positions of Pat and many others. Japan had utterly NO democratic history, and Germany very little. Their current democracies were imposed by completion of total war. If history is any lesson, Iraq is taking a long time to complete not because we were too aggressive, but because we were not nearly aggressive enough against the Baathist political core of the country and the nitwit militia movements such as Sadr's. They saw our restraint as weakness.
If you want to draw lessons, I suggest looking at the provisional governments of Russia and Germany that were toppled easily by revolutionaries. They show why Iraq needs us until they are on their feet. We used to have good sense of how debilitating life under tyranny is, especially when SU fell. Now we have conveniently forgotten in a haze of partisan spin.
Lenin came at the end of WWI because the new pro-Western democratic government was not capable to to rule.
The "harsh peace" was not made by Germany, it was a ploy by the Communists who gave away territory in order to defeat the White Army.