You are a real downer this morning. Try this one on for size...
The Bill of Rights, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, etc, etc, is THE defining document of HUMAN RIGHTS bar none. Want to know what American exceptionalism is? It is contained in those ten amendments.
Our foreign policy SHOULD be based upon installing, encouraging, cajoling and spreading those ideals to every corner of the globe.
The problem with “the people” putting a jihadist regime in power is that radical Islam’s beliefs are ANTITHETICAL to the ideals of the Bill of Rights, and therefore, anathema to a free people.
So we go to war to force peoples to be free.
The obvious question is, “Free to do what?”
And the obvious answer is, “Whatever they want to do.”
The notion of us forcing people to be free to do what we want them to do is more than slightly oxymoronic.
I actually agree with you. What you are describing is not democracy, it is civil society and rule of law.
Civil society and rule of law has existed under a variety of systems of government. Its general connection with democracy, which means rule by the people, has been only because democracy has historically been the only way of maintaining civil society for an extended period.
But we really have no effective way to force civil society on cultures that don’t want it. Attempting to do so would by definition kill the very freedom we’re trying to spread.
Unfortunately.