How George W. Bush Did Not Have Anything to Do With Bringing Democracy to Iran

Sometimes I hear conservative spin as a voice in my head before I hear it as a voice coming out of the TV or Radio. Last night as I tried to sleep, it occurred to me that neo-cons would soon be spinning the ongoing peaceful democratic revolution in Iran as proof that George W. Bush was right to invade Iraq.

Before logging on this morning to predict that Dick Cheney or some other neo-con would be soon be spewing this bullshit on a Sunday show, I decided to look at a couple of conservative websites to see if it was already there. My search ended on the first site I checked--Red State--where Brian Faughnan wrote this:

The United States has helped make the world’s most dangerous hot spot somewhat safer by supporting democracy in the Middle East. As Moe has pointed out, the emergence of a democracy in Iraq has encouraged other nations to demand the right to choose their own leaders. The world can only become safer if the people of Iran win their fight to choose the man who replaces Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

This is pretty sick spin. George W. Bush's version of supporting democracy in the Middle East is what provoked Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khemenei to turn away from a moderate reformer as president in favor of the frothing madman, Ahmadinejad, who could serve as Bush's convincing foil in a game of international brinksmanship. The allure of Western freedoms and culture, as much European as American, is a factor in this revolt, but it's not coming to them by peering over the border into Iraq. They're getting some of it from technology, but most of it is coming from the Iranian people's own vision of the future of their own democratic institutions, which have been evolving for decades.