There is so much wrong with your brief statement, it is difficult to know where to start.
From Three Thousand years ago to 600 years ago, the area was infinitely more significant than it is now, save only for its oil resources. But you do nothing to address our access to its oil resources, by trying to "build a functioning democracy," in a land where the average I.Q. is under 90, where you have three or four antagonistic ethnicities, and where a great many of the common people hate our guts.
What evidence do you have that Democracy is suitable for Iraq, when the Founding Fathers premised our whole Constitutional situation of checks and balances, upon the perfectly rational idea that we needed protection from "Democracy," which in most places, throughout history, has ended up as mob rule?
There were reasons to attack Sadaam, but there is no reason to pursue the Leftist pipe dream of imposing Democracy in the Third World. That was the fantasy pursued by Dean Rusk in the 1960s, and the damage it did in many lands is still evident. (See Democracy In The Third World.)
William Flax
I agree
The only reason "democracy" (cause we're not really a democracy) thrived in America is because we had a long standing intellectual tradition brought over from Europe which encouraged these ideas.
The Middle East doesn't have it, you're talking about a place that has always known absolute rule. You can't go into a place with a history like that, and expect elective government to thrive. You have to acclamate their culture for such a thing, and that would take at the very least, a century.
How long was it from the Magna Carta to the Declaration of Independece?
Our best motto is the motto we had during the cold war...
He may be a ...... But he's our......