Since most of our allies in the region don’t seem that democratic, what’s the point?
Maybe they aren’t ready for that, and a ruling clique would be good enough for now.
No. In this context, “democratic” means “friendly to the US”. For all its faults, Iran is far more democratic than Saudi Arabia – Iran actually has elections where a majority of voters can elect the government – but it’s clear that the current administration prefers the Saudi model to thev Iranian model.
Giles beat me to it. A truly democratic government in Iraq would result in either chaos (see Lebanon), or dominance by the majority faction (probably the Shi’ites in cahoots with the Kurds). Iran is demonstrative.
Note that there are other examples where democracy has been aborted in favor of strongman rule in the region: Egypt and Algeria come to mind. In Algeria, elections would have resulted in something similar to Iran; they were nullified by those more friendly to western European governments who were already in power. Egypt, of course, refuses to allow a democracy precisely because of the threat of being taken over by fundamentalists.
It sometimes escapes our notice in the US that Democracy as a government form is VERY tricky to keep working right. This despite the fact that one of the older democracies lies on our southern border, and has spent much of its history working as anything BUT a democracy in the sense we think of it.
Third on what Giles said. We aren’t and never have been concerned about Iraqi democracy. We wanted a puppet state.
Democracy is daft, in states that are unstable.
The average person taking an IQ test scores 100
What does the average voter score ?
If the election is not rigged (by a limited sample of candidates) then chaos can ensue.