Lustrations ("purges") are a bad idea in general, especially for larger countries that don't have a history of democracy. I don't see one can look at recent hi

Lustrations ("purges") are a bad idea in general, especially for larger countries that don't have a history of democracy. I don't see one can look at recent history and come to support this view. The lustrations in the former Warsaw Pact countries, and denazification (such as it was) in Germany after WW2 seem to have worked well enough, and to have been crucial enablers of the process of democratic transition in these countries (having had very little history of democracy as such until that point). If anything West Germany suffered from not being sufficiently robust in its denazification process until far too late. Of course, such purges should never be simply imposed from the outside, on the heals of an invasion which should have never happened anyway, which is the key reason why de-Ba'athification failed so miserably in Iraq.