That may be one of the best questions asked here this year.
So, what is different?
Germany (at least) was SO broken that they had to "do what they were told" to rebuild. And what they were told was GOOD advice. The US, injected money (even the UK sent some, despite the fact that we were completely broke).
Japan was a VERY similar case.
In both cases there were large armies of occupation, imposing law and structure on the rebuilding societies.
My father was stationed in Italy after the war, again to provide authority, structure and the rule of law.
The same huge effort was never made in Iraq. We wanted to do it "on the cheap". (And perhaps should have not used Western firepower to depose a regime (always going to be easy to win such a war) without having any plan to win the peace.
Blair and Bush were not Churchill and Roosevelt.
In fact,. I'm rather ashamed that I put them all in the same sentence.
