[jcranmer]

Not the OP, but:

I think that Bush was sincere in his belief that bringing democracy to Iraq was a (if not the) primary goal of the Iraq War, and that doing so would be beneficial to the Iraqis. And I could believe that he felt a "white man's burden" and obligation that, because he could do so, he ought to do so.

[And to be clear: my belief is that the notion of "white man's burden" is incredibly racist and offensive, and I do not condone actions taken in such a manner.]

While I wouldn't call it "allergic to democracy", I can also entertain arguments that successful democratic regimes have preconditions for their success that Iraq simply did not have. I can even entertain arguments that democracy is not the best form of government, and it strikes me as mildly offensive to presume that democracy is automatically better than whatever form of government exists.

I think OP's point is that the Iraq War was undertaken in the [racist] belief that they were bettering the Iraqis by bringing democracy to them, and the failure is that, well, we were racist in the first place to believe that "bringing democracy" to another people is "bettering" them.

[aabeshou]

> I think that Bush was sincere in his belief that bringing democracy to Iraq was a (if not the) primary goal of the Iraq War, and that doing so would be beneficial to the Iraqis.

I believe that Bush probably stroked himself thinking this way, as did virtually the entire media and political class. However I don't think it was anywhere close to a primary goal, as you say. More to the point: their actual conduct in the war does not indicate in any way that this was a genuine goal as opposed to a piece of propaganda.

> While I wouldn't call it "allergic to democracy", I can also entertain arguments that successful democratic regimes have preconditions for their success that Iraq simply did not have.

Any citations for this notion? But to restate a point I made in another comment: the discussion of whether Iraq is ready for democracy is almost offensively inappropriate and nonsequitur, because the U.S. military does not aim to install democracy, it aims to install regimes that are friendly to U.S. military and business interests, regardless of the wishes of the local people who are governed.

To put it another way, we have no way of knowing whether Iraq is "ready for democracy" based on the Iraq War because the U.S. military did not act in a way to actually try to install democracy.

[jcranmer]

> Any citations for this notion?

I don't recall if Why Nations Fail specifically covered democracy, but at the very least, you can definitely see why nations caught in the vicious cycles it outlines might suffer more because of democracy.

> because the U.S. military does not aim to install democracy, it aims to install regimes that are friendly to U.S. military and business interests

No. The US military does not aim to install any regime, it aims to defeat the enemy's military. That's the big thing of what went so horribly wrong in Iraq: the US kept pushing military solution after military solution to fix very-non-military problems and was confused as to why it didn't work.

[aabeshou]

> The US military does not aim to install any regime, it aims to defeat the enemy's military.

If you look at U.S. foreign policy (covert and overt, CIA, military) over history, one consistent goal is to install regimes that are friendly to the U.S. and to topple regimes which are not. Defeating the military of the hostile regime can be part of that. But if that were it, then the U.S. would just leave once that had been accomplished, and that's not what happens.

The U.S. generally sticks around and tries to install a replacement, often undemocratically. On the occasion that they do implement democratic elections, any winner that is not sufficiently friendly to U.S. interests is undermined or even couped and a (usually right-wing) government is installed undemocratically.

Occasionally the U.S. will even undermine the democratic government of a country it hasn't even officially militarily engaged with, because the leader is threatening U.S. business interests. The history of U.S. relations with Latin America is littered with this type of illegal covert warfare, most recently in Bolivia with Evo Morales who was nationalizing natural resources that U.S. business wanted access to.

[hindsightbias]

> But if that were it, then the U.S. would just leave once that had been accomplished, and that's not what happens.

That is exactly what the US military planned with Iraq, Rumsfeld had outlawed any talk of Phase IV (nation building). The generals wanted out of there as quick as possible because they knew it would be a clusterfk regardless of Rumsfeld, Bush, Cheney thinking State, USAid and the UN would just manage Chalabi’s flowering democracy.

Of course, that fantasy lasted as long as it to blow up the UN HQ in Baghdad.

[banmeagaindan2]

I think ideological is a better word than racist here.

A racial purist would adopt one of two positions - invade and extract value - or don't waste our money on those people. It's true from the left side they see rightists but this is an optical illusion. It's as how I used to believe a democrats were secret Maoists.