I know that you, and many others, fear that the Iraqis are not ready to take the reins of more populist government - that they can only be in dictatorships. It is hard not to have that fear, especially when the Old Media is so slanted, and the terrorists are at work. Honestly, we won't know for many, many years how successful an operation this will be. I am optimistic, from my personal contact, that it will be much more successful than people fear, but my time scale for examining the question is quite literally decades.
It is hard for us to keep in mind how long it took for the US government to be fully formed - I would argue it took about 50 years - some would argue that the transition from monarchy to democratic republic was not complete for more like 100.
What you say, makes sense.
We'll have to hope.
And I agree, that the American transition did not happen over-night, and despite what Popular Myth says, many people did not think the Revolution was a good idea, and blood was shed for many years after.