Whatever else former president George W. Bush got wrong, he was right about this at least: "The world has a clear interest in the spread of democratic values, because stable and free nations do not breed the ideologies of murder." (Speech to American Enterprise Institute, February 2003.) That is, foster liberty in the world’s most oppressive countries and watch the axis of evil bend, then break.
Look at Iran today.
True, the burden of proof is on anybody who wants to attribute a passion for liberty to Tehran’s crowds. At one point, more than a million people were thought to be out disputing the announced result of their country’s election, which against all likelihood and expectation, handed power to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for another four years. That’s a lot of people demanding, "Where’s my vote?"
But, it could be about the economic shambles. Inflation is high, so is unemployment. Iran exports oil, but must import gasoline.
Ahmadinejad wasn’t running on his record.