Over at Little Green Footballs, chins are pulled:
For all the talk about bringing democracy to the Arab world, this problem seems nearly intractable. If the uneducated, highly propagandized people of the Arab world are given freedom of choice, many are likely to choose a political system that will destroy that very freedom.
And if they’re not given a choice?
What if Iran had got real democracy in 1979? The Islamists would have won – and by now the electorate, presumably almost as sick of Sharia as they are in real life, would have booted them out. Of course, the theocrats’ first act might have been to cripple democracy — in which case Iran would be, er, no worse off than it is in our timeline.
What’s to lose by risking the same process in Algeria or Egypt?
Not ready for democracy? Perhaps not; but ‘protecting’ them from it is no way to prepare them. Temporary dictatorship is rarely temporary.