democracy in Arabland ... One and only one ... Algeria.
You left out the most important part: Ten years ago Islamic fundamentalists were on the verge of taking over Algeria thru elections, "The FIS won 188 of 206 parliamentary seats."
The government cancelled the elections, the military took over, and it's been a bitter, violent battle between the two sides since then.
Are we going to go into Algeria to restore democracy? Not likely.
This is the fly-in-the-ointment of Middle Eastern democracy. The people of these countries are more fundamentalist, more anti-Western, and especially anti-Israel, than their governments are.
The fundamentalists are good at elections. They're very organized, unlike most of the society, they literally demonize their opponents, and they make sure everyone votes at least once, etc. Their followers are on the whole poorly educated and easily led.
We are somewhat in the position we were vis-a-vis communism, when we argued that letting the communists win an election meant the end of elections. This was the fear in Algeria, where the fundamentalists had the votes to change the constitution, and the fear of its neighbors, Egypt, Jordan... with militant Muslim communities of their own.
We have a chance to get a decent government started in Iraq, but fully free elections are a ways off. It seems we need to get the Shiites and the Kurds to see the advantages of having the Sunnis take a big role in government, since they know how to run one (we hope.)
In most democracies a larger working class allows a middle class to prosper, because they see the advantage to everyone in having skilled professionals and management.
The U.S. IMO is going the other way, trying to export its professional jobs to India, China, etc., for the benefit of the wealthy. It's programmers and engineers now, but the rest of you will be going too.
;-)
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