Democracy can help understand international affairs

As problematic as the neoconservative understanding of world affairs as an eternal conflict between liberal democracy and evil is, it can still help us in certain circumstances. When China and Russia, for example, stymie efforts at intervention in Darfur, it is doing so in part because of its own illiberal politics. American calls to action, as ineffectual as they have been, have been driven by the nation's own liberal values.

The eradication of terrorism my the militant promotion of democracy is a different story though.