The administration’s declared long-term strategy on Iraq is that “A new regime in Iraq would serve as a dramatic and inspiring example of freedom for other nations in the region.” Once Iraq falls, the monarchies and theocratic autocracies surrounding it will topple as well, and a new age of democracy and freedom will be ushered in for the people of the Middle-East. Cue trumpets and Tom Friedmanisms. There is a name for this line of thinking. It’s the domino theory. (Conservative analysts, amongst many others, have found it unconvincing in the past.)

All of this optimistic idealism about the Middle East’s rosy democratic future goes against the grain for right-wing thinkers. Normally they think of themselves as the hard-headed realists on international affairs. The wets on the left are the misguided romantics who want to give peace a chance and believe in the U.N. and all kinds of other woolly-headed, idealistic crap. (As I’ve noted before, for domestic policy the opposite is the case.) Yet they now appear to believe that Jeffersonian democracy will spring from the ruins of Tikrit and spread across the Islamic world. What the hell is happening to them?

If that really is the plan, it’s time to seriously consider dsquared’s three questions

give me one single example of something with the following three characteristics:

  1. It is a policy initiative of the current Bush administration
  2. It was significant enough in scale that I’d have heard of it (at a pinch, that I should have heard of it)
  3. It wasn’t in some important way completely fucked up during the execution.

I’m also wondering (a) Since WWII, how many autocratic or totalitarian countries have been invaded by a democracy, had the bad guys deposed, and a stable democratic regime installed; and (b) How does this number compare to the number of invasions or other interventions that resulted in puppet governments, friendly autocrats, messy long-term military occupations, or outright disasters?