Certain enemies abroad — Ba'athists, terrorists both discrete and fostered by Iran and Syria — have been most effective in their detriment of liberal Iraqi sovereignty in the opinions of American intellectuals, even those on the right. Premise: Citizens of Iraq vote trebly but their a) lives are continually disrupted or ended, b) government is infiltrated, c) asseveration for representative government is violently denied; by the actions of said certain enemies. Conclusion from an informal consensus at National Review: Pronounce democratization null and consider indirectly meeting most of the demands of — said certain enemies.
Rightists aren't supposed to blame victims, but then Republicans are nation-building now, so things are already antipodean. Equilibrium, however, is insistent, and traditionalism is, for this topic, an anodyne form of circumlocution.
Contributor Stanley Kurtz made a good argument for a heavier hand in eliminating a despotism's civil and societal framework, and a weak argument against liberal reform. Elections do not make democracy, but since democratization is never undertaken outside of hostile environments, destructive interference is endemic. Editor-in-chief Rich Lowry, proposing a "war for stability," invoked a converse relationship between democracy (free, unstable) and authoritarianism (not so free, stable).
The latter formulation is nonsense, and has manifestly been so for five years. Lowry and his colleagues have fallen so deeply into abstraction that they have disconnected the practical reality of "trad[ing] some of the democratic legitimacy," in the words of the editor. What would that be? A strongman who would, especially in Iraq, hold onto power by silencing the population with gangs and contracted thugs, corrupting all law and jurisdiction, taking all steps to obstruct liberalization — in other words, exactly what Lowry, Kurtz et al. deplore right now.
Why would the United States want another Hosni Mubarak or Pervez Musharraf: Egypt, where nearly thirty years of annual stipends discourage Near East democratists; Pakistan, where half of the government answers to Musharraf and carries out some of Washington's requests, and the other half abets the Taliban, whose 1996 Afghan cabal they oversaw? What about the House of Saud, the "stable ally" with a culture redolent of al Qaeda doctrine? Isn't this a conundrum that National Review already lays on the White House doorstep?
Lowry calls the chosen battlefield a "mess," without considering that this "mess" is how wars must be fought — often blindly, never without error. Were that the case, National Review would have to modify its stance or else, to remain consistent, come out for unconditional surrender to anyone and everything. The magazine would balk at this but if it doesn't want a reductio argument thrown at it, it should take care not to sound absurd.