Democracy moves to the lowest common denominator, which often resides in the mass of the people. Rarely has democracy descended into religious demagoguery and baseness as quickly as it did in Pakistan, of course with help from the ever-present, maleficent Saudis and self-serving politicians. It is entertainingly documented by MJ Akbar in Tinderbox: The Past and Future of Pakistan.
This old article I found in a Daniel Sanchez piece today has it all: flytrap theory, which worked, but in the opposite way American strategists thought it would; fight them over there instead of here; building democracy in the Arab world; bring ’em on. It all seems like a long, long time and hubris ago.
Perhaps the oddest bit of logic from those days was that the U.S. being in Iraq created a target for terrorists other than Israel, a sort of red matador’s cape to distract the bull. But unfortunately the cape takes the brunt of it until the matador, whoever that was supposed to be, finishes off the bull. The cape looks as if it was actually the bull, and that bull is leery of returning to the ring this time.