The Right Way

Timothy Garton Ash has a good piece comparing Iraq and the Ukraine, highlighting the wrong and right ways to spread freedom. With increasing talk of engaging Iran in some capacity, the U.S. would do well to learn that freedom should be encouraged within, and I have made that point here previously. An Iraq-style invasion is the last thing we want with Iran, though if it is necessary and possible to cease urnanium enrichment via target strikes I would probably support that. We need to be engaging the pro-democracy factions within Iran as much as possible, so that it will be their revolution and not ours. As Ash says regarding the Ukraine:

Ukrainians did it for themselves. With a little help from their friends, to be sure. But whatever the role of western support, this was the Ukrainians' own idea, and the people I met on the ground taking risks for democracy, in the freezing camps of Kiev's tent city and on Independence Square, were Ukrainians.