Democracy promotion, half-baked

In today's NYT online;

"After Sept. 11, 2001, Mr. Bush and his aides decided that autocratic
regimes, particularly in the Middle East, fostered hopelessness that
led to the attacks on the United States."

Thus in part the justification for Pres. Bush's democracy agenda.
While the above surely contributes to the conditions that open a path
to extremism, the Bush administration failed to recognize an important
second component of US comportment in the world, one that was
essential to keep the administration's pronouncements about the value
of democracy from sounding hypocritical. The Bush gang failed to
realize that as a superpower and symbol of democratic structure, we
carried a heightened obligation to define and hold, indeed exemplify,
the moral high ground. Every foreign policy initiative that fails to
pass muster undercuts our ability to sell this way of life, and in the eyes of people around the world, lowers
democracy into the same pit as those autocratic regimes we cite as
stimulants to the cause of extremism.