Having George W. Bush explain democracy to the Iraqis is a lot like a man writing a book about pregnancy, which has itself been equated to taking your car to a mechanic who doesn’t drive. In each case, basic facts and concepts are not in dispute. What is lost, however, is a deeper understanding of the spirit of the thing, a knowledge that the costs along the way make reaching the final goal even sweeter.

For George Bush, democracy requires no sacrifices, no trade-offs.

True democracy requires leaders who refrain from tyranny, but Bush has given himself a free pass. True democracy requires a marketplace of ideas, but the only members of the public Bush meets have been screened and validated to agree with him. True democracy requires the consent of the governed but Bush neither asks our permission nor heeds our protests.

If I were an Iraqi and was taking my view of democracy from what I’ve seen so far, I would think that in a democracy, the government uses propaganda to lie about the news and distort public opinion. I would think elections are rigged so that the right people can vote and the right people can win office. I would think torture is used on the state’s enemies. I would think democracy is exactly the same as dictatorship. And for George Bush, it probably is.

What we have here are not the wrong students, we have the wrong teacher. George Bush can no more be the instrument for spreading democracy than a cat can spread understanding of fish – and all the cat knows about fish is how to get fat off them.