I would certainly have to agree with this. A lot of the difficulties I have seen in both Afghanistan and Iraq stem from what I have to characterize as an amazingly naive assumption about what politics "should be". Some of my more left wing colleagues would describe it as the "imposition of American Hegemony" but, personally, I am more inclined to assume ignorance than malice . I'm calling it "ignorance" because the actions of imposing republican forms of government in both states seems to go against the expressed wishes of many of the populace. This is one of the paradoxes inherent in the promulgation of "democracy" by the west. Do "we" accept the democratically made decisions of other nations when they go against our own national interests?
This is interesting to me, since I think a review of the history will show that direct elections and the rapid democratic transition in Iraq were in fact "imposed" on the U.S. by the Shia political parties and massive public demonstrations ordered by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani --- the original CPA plan proposed by Bremer called for "caucuses" where voters would choose from a CPA-approved slate of candidates (similar to Iranian-style elections). In fact, I have a hard time finding any sort of "anti-democratic" rhetoric coming from any Iraqi political figure outside the jihadi/ISI ranks - even Sunni politicians and groups like the Association of Muslim Scholars do not discount elections as a means of legitimate government.