Anti-Subjugator

There was an interesting excerpt from this article.

"The neoconservative assumption that the default condition when you eliminate a dictatorship is liberal democracy has been shown to be false. It is not the default position of mankind but a rare achievement, one that is often won only at a high price."

Here's my take on it. Power is normally grabbed by someone willing to risk their lives in a power-grab. These sort of people are the minority of the population. The vast majority of people just try to live their lives and accept whoever is ruling them. To enable democracy, you need security forces who have pledged their loyalty to the constitution rather than an individual.

I think it is quite simple to install liberal democracy. It may not be the natural condition for humans, but it is simple to install by simply getting the security forces to swear loyalty to the constitution. The difficulty in Iraq has been that the old security forces were mistrusted and needed to be disbanded so that Iraq could have all the elements of success. Afghanistan's path has been more successful because the old security forces were not immediately disbanded. Afghanistan is the better example of what can be done. Going back further, Panama and Grenada are success stories.

We really need to liberate Iran to see a quick overthrowing of a government. Allied forces can be in and out in a month. It is imperative that the slow nation-building campaigns of Afghanistan and Iraq are not used to deter a quick overthrow of countries that don't require nation-building to be done on them.