Democratic Middle East

Mark A. Kilmer has got it right:

Going into this, President Bush envisaged a Democratic Middle East with which the United States could deal individually and as a group. Democracy, if it takes hold in Iraq and is nurtured by other democratic nations, could spread. The question then would be: Do we allow France, Russia, Germany, the Kingdom of Belgium, or Nelson Mandela to participate in sustaining the new democracies? It would be an abomination. Only four countries saw the necessity of risking their by far most valuable commodity for the future.

“Going into this, President Bush envisaged a Democratic Middle East…” It’s a wide image, not the narrowly focused WMD about which today’s anti-Bush crowd feebly harps. This entire operation was too grand for their imaginations.