Post Iraq Ergo Propter Iraq

post hoc n. the logical fallacy of believing that temporal succession implies a causal relation.

Humorless sheep like Chris Muir assume this current wave of democratic reform is primarily Bush's doing. Ahhhh... no. Not in Ukraine. Not in Lebanon. Iraq? Well, yes, that goes without saying. Sistani pushed for elections and Bush eventually agreed to hold them, and then pretended it was his idea. If we hadn't killed thousands of people, that could've happened only by an (unlikely) popular uprising.

But I will give Bush credit for his administration's shrewd pro-democratic meneuvering vis à vis Hosni Mubarak. We 1) offered him an extra chunk of change if he let an opposition candidate run against him, and 2) threatened not to give him the huge chunk of change we always do for "humanitarian" aid if he did not. This worked. And amazingly, without firing a shot. One wonders what we might've accomplished over the past decade if we'd taken half of what we spent on offense defense and used it to lure similar nasties toward the greater good.