Bush was a 'realpolitiker' before 9/11

The September 12 Paradigm Foreign Affairs: "This was roughly the policy Bush pursued during his first nine months in office, and the rest of the world quickly got the message. According to a Pew Research Center poll released in August 2001, 70 percent of western Europeans surveyed (85 percent in France) believed that the Bush administration made decisions 'based only on U.S. interests.'"

Robert Kagan writes in Foreign Affairs Sept/Oct 2008 that Bush and Condoleezza Rice distinguished themselves as realists before the 9/11 catastrophe. The democracy generation came as a motivation for the organization of Iraq post 2003.

In a post Dick Erixon discusses Bush the idealist who fight for democracy in the world and seems to want to make a bet on the outcome in Afghanistan compared to that in Iraq after 2003. He suggests that Obama is going to have to become like Nixon, who removed the troops from Vietnam. Today's Vietnam then being Afghanistan.

Erixon refers to a debate on SVT where he defends Bush "ideology" of bombing in democracy across the world. He combatant Göran Greider is somewhat shocked and I must agree that I never thought it was a good idea to bomb North Korea and Iran. I never liked John McCain's "Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran" either.

At the time I very much liked the idea of making Iraq and Afghanistan democratic. However, I have awaken from this erroneous assumption that this would indeed be possible. I think it is very wise of Obama to leave Afghanistan beginning July 2011, I take his word for it, and let the Afghans establish whatever equilibrium they care to engage in. There is not going to be a democracy as we talk about it in Scandinavia in either Iraq or Afghanistan for many years, if ever. In Afghanistan a grand question mark seems to be if a centralized government is going to be possible at all which would be the prerequisite for stability.