Maciamo, I agree with msot of your points except:

In fact, being idealistic and moralistic can lead to some ugly situation where the that culture tries to impose its views on others because they are right (a bit like you know saying that if Japanese are as described above, they must be wrong !). Why do you think the West has led crusades in the Middle Ages ? Because they possessed the truth and the Muslims could only be wrong. What happened when the Spaniards and others colonized America ? They converted the locals by force to their moral beliefs. What is happening now with Bush and Iraq< Iran or North Korea ? Bush saw Saddam (and still see the 2 others) as evil because their values were different.

The advantage with non-moralistic countries like Japan, China or basically all East Asia as far as Indonesia is that they don'ttry to impose their values to others. That is why China has never tried to cololize the rest of the world to "civilize" them. When Japan invaded other Asian countries in the 1st half of the 20th century, they didn't try to civilize them or educate them, or convert them to their religion (although Shinto was state-religion at the time). They only cared about money (natural resources, forced labor, plundering of historical treasures, etc.).
I see nothing wrong with occasionally forcing morality of murderous dictators. I disagree with the IRaq war because of honesty issues and the fact taht most of Australia supported it but our tool of a PM went ahead anyway.

But this world is full of murdering curs that steam-roll over their people for their own gain. Mugabe. Jong Il. The Saudi Royale family. The leaders of Sudan if they are in fact supporting the Janjaweed. And before they were taken down Saddam and the Taliban.

I am in firm belief, as a leftist, socialist, ecologist and humanitarian that the people in those countries have a right to live free lives unopressed by cruel monsters. If using a bit of 'morality inducement' is the way to do that when other avenues fail so be it. And unfortunately the other avenues fail. Trade Sanctions never seem to work. In the end its the people that suffer, not the murderes in charge.

I don't think that after the removal of the cancer (and thats what the leaders of those countries are, cancers) that those that did the removal should force their morality onto the newly freed people. They should only do so to the extent that its prevents another monster taking the old ones place.