[TheDon]

I guess the parallel I was thinking about was where a mortal enemy of our country, in which we were engaged in a war, upon being defeated became a secular democracy, where it had once been a dictatorship. A further parallel that I was alluding to was the nice constitution that we wrote for them. That the two cases are not completely parallel is obvious.

[AmishDude]

Well, the point is that Japan was not a dictatorship, anymore than England with its queen. The contention that I make is that Iraq is not equipped to be another Japan. It will be enough just to keep the ethnic hatreds in check. The best solution for that, given the entire context of the Arab world, would be a Hashemite king.