With the press still chewing over the thick soup of George Bush's second inaugural address, Iraq heads to an election. Here is George Bush's actual promise to the world: democracy forged at gunpoint. You don't have to know much about history to think this isn't likely to work.

Democracy, of course, wasn't our original intent in attacking Iraq. But the weapons of mass destruction - the "mushroom cloud" threat of White House propaganda - turned out to be fanciful inventions of White House spin doctors, neo-conservative ideologues and Iraqi conmen on the Pentagon payroll, like Ahmad Chalabi. The president himself admitted there wasn't any working relationship between Saddham Hussein and al Qaeda. (Iraq became a hothouse of terrorists only after we occupied it.) So "democracy" became a default position to excuse the worst foreign policy debacle since Vietnam.

Democracy, however, isn't easily implanted at gunpoint. The great imperialist nations - Britain, France, Germany, Russia, even the U.S. in the Philippines, Panama and elsewhere - were notoriously unsuccessful at building stable democracies in their colonies. Iraq, notably, is part of that record of failure.
It isn't surprising. Democracy requires passionate democrats. It thrives when people organize themselves to be free. The British crown did not create America's democracy. It took a Revolution, a new constitution, a civil war, and citizen movements - populists, labor, women, and civil rights - to forge America's democracy.
Law and security are vital. When families are at risk, people often turn to strongmen, to military leaders, to warlords, to tribal loyalties in search of security. In Iraq, the Kurds will vote in the elections. But if the new government were to try to curb their autonomy, the Kurdish leaders would lead a dash for independence.
In much of Iraq, violence mocks democracy. Candidates cannot campaign. Campaign workers fear for their lives. Citizens will vote, perhaps, but only under armed guards. And all shudder at the prospect of an escalating civil war.

The Bush administration will declare this election a success, by definition. But democracy isn't about elections only. It is about law, free speech, the right to assemble, the growth of independent civil institutions like unions that empower workers. Hitler was elected. Hussein used to stage elections. Free elections without free speech, and the security necessary to free speech, are a contradiction in terms.

The best hope in this election is that it will create a new leadership that will demonstrate its legitimacy and independence in the only fashion that would have credibility for the vast majority of Iraqis - by inviting the U.S.. forces to leave. But there is the rub. If the U.S. forces leave, most observers believe, the civil war will escalate. If the U.S. forces stay, they are a constant provocation, strip any Iraqi government of its national legitimacy, and the civil war will escalate. .
Throughout the Moslem world, this reality and our history make Mr. Bush's words on democracy ring false. We based troops in Saudi Arabia, and helped prop up the tribal dictatorship there. We subverted Iran's great democratic leader, Mossedegh, and replaced him with a dictator. We embrace the dictator of Pakistan. We helped set up the dictatorship in Indonesia that ruled there for decades. Americans don't know this history and the media doesn't tell them about it. But people across the Moslem world know this history - and current realities - very well.

American founders thought that our values - in their best light - of democracy, free speech, the rule of law, free enterprise - formed a model - a "city on the hill" -that others might choose to copy. But they warned against going abroad in search of monsters to destroy.
But under Mr. Bush's policy, America is focused on creating a new government in Iraq, while in our own country, the "city on the hill" increasingly becomes a tale of two cities - one privileged and one struggling. We spend as much as the rest of the world combined on our military, but forty-five million Americans can't afford health insurance, and Mr. Bush's next budget will cut investment in education across the board. He will ask for $100 billion for Iraq next year, while saving $300 million by cutting the critical Pell college grants to a million kids. Mr. Bush promises to police the world, but he does so while our country is borrowing more than a billion dollars a day from foreign creditors, and our jobs move abroad at an ever more rapid pace.

Freedom is a mighty force, as Mr. Bush said in his speech. But freedom must be won by the oppressed; not donated by the powerful. Mr. Bush's speech suggested - without mentioning Iraq - that exporting democracy was the centerpiece of his policy. But democracy at gunpoint isn't a policy. It is a desperate deception.