In 2003 Donald Rumsfeld justified invading Iraq to introduce democracy, twice supporting that in later speeches.
In May 2003, shortly after the invasion of Iraq, Rumsfeld said Iraq would have a democracy similar to that of the United States:
“Well, the wonderful thing about democracy is that when someone sticks their head up, somebody doesn’t like it. And therefore, there will be that process, just like in our country. There will be a debate. There will be a discussion. And ultimately, people would decide who they want. It won’t be us who will be deciding who is going to be doing anything. It is going to be the Iraqi people, over time”.
On February 9, 2005, in an address given on the USS O’Bannon he said,
“We just experienced last Sunday elections in Iraq. Admittedly, the Iraqi people don’t have much experience with democracy. An awful lot of experts and pundits and people who observe these things and write about them have suggested that the people in that part of the world aren’t ready for democracy, that they aren’t ready for freedom. But if one thinks about what took place Sunday with 25 million people who have had no experience with democracy, and what’s taken place every hour since last Sunday: Instead of talking about killing people, instead of talking about invading neighbors, instead of a country that used chemical weapons against its own people and against its neighbors, what’s being done today in Iraq is politics”.
Later that November Rumsfeld said:
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“Well certainly the success that’s being achieved there, if one thinks about it, there were elections in January, then there was, October 15 in Iraq, there was a referendum on the constitution that had been drafted by the people elected by the Iraqi people, and now we’re looking towards a third election in a single year on December 15, where the people will be electing people under their new constitution. That is an enormous step forward for the people of Iraq.
Obviously at the beginning of the war that was supposed to start with shock and awe and would have Iraqi people running to the liberators to thank us for what we did for them, he seems to have thought Democracy would be coming to Iraq thanks to the U.S. of A. by way of a war.
Now years later, and after the country was plunged in debt and members of the military were killed and maimed, and many returned home to be ignored, he now says:
“I’m not one who thinks that our particular template of democracy is appropriate for other countries at every moment of their histories. The idea that we could fashion a democracy in Iraq seemed to me unrealistic. I was concerned about it when I first heard those words.”
He now claims that he never bought into the Bush-Cheney argument that a US invasion of Iraq would lead to democracy there.
A little late; a little contradictory, but that certainly produced a little shock and awe.