In an earlier post on neo-conservatism and the idea of democracy promotion, I questioned Franklin Foer's suggestion that neo-conservatism in foreign affairs set its face against Clintonian "liberal internationalism". I argued that the differences between Clintonian and "Wolfowitzian" idealism were pragmatic rather than rooted in principle. One of my reasons for doing so was my belief that there is precisely a liberal internationalist case for democracy-promotion in the Middle East. Peter Beinart, responding in the New Republic to the co-founders of MoveOn, agrees:
I want Democrats to make defeating totalitarian Islam their defining passion because I believe that it is liberalism, guided by its best traditions--not "neoconservative ideology"--that can make Muslims free and Americans safe.
And Michael Ignatieff's liberal optimism about the prospects for democracy in Iraq remains intact (just):
Pessimists say the U.S. is imposing democracy at gunpoint in Iraq, but the evidence is that millions of Kurds and Shia, and some Sunnis as well, passionately want free elections in their country. There is no reason that American soldiers cannot help them ensure a relatively free electoral process just as they have helped out in Afghanistan. This moment, frightening and precarious as it is, is the last chance Iraqis have to exit from the black tunnel of Ba'athist rule and the chaos of incipient civil war.