I wanted to re-engage on the Bush freedom stuff from a while back prior to the Goldberg-Stuttaford slap-down. When it comes to Bush’s theology of freedom and Iraq, I think a lot of Jonah’s correctives and caveats back here are right. It’s important to note that the neo-cons wanted more troops from the beginning and, as a practical matter, what contributed to our failures in Iraq was a stew of Bush’s unrealistic expectations of what the Iraqis would be like, together with Rumsfeld the realist’s unwillingness to commit fully to nation-building in Iraq, together with incompetent generalship, together with Bush’s weak management from the top. All played a role, and it is a mistake to over-ideologize the reasons for our failures.

However, it is notable that our real problem in the Middle East right now is not a lack of democracy so much as weak states that cannot impose a monopoly of force on their territories, from Iraq, to the PA, to Lebanon, to Pakistan (see Jonah’s excellent column on order today). Ideally, we want strong and liberalizing states, but not having a strong state at all is problematic at best, and often disastrous. The question is whether democracy contributes to the weakness of the state and thus may be hindering the cause of cracking down on militancy rather than helping it. I supported the Iraqi elections as the best means to establish a legitimate government there. They were an enormous propaganda blow against the insurgency and I thought they were a turning point at the time. But their effect has been undermined by the persistent disorder in Iraq, and we are winning the Sunnis over to our side now not on the basis of the appeal of democracy, but on the basis of order and safety.

I wonder what Michael Rubin makes of this discussion…