The nature of the new "democracy" in Iraq is being tauted as the savior of that country specifically and the middle-east in general. The problem with this is that democracy is a beginning; but only that. Democracy is a minimal step in the direction of a civilized society.
With a constitution that protects the beliefs of only one religion -- Islam and rejects others, it is difficult to envision a country that is not going to be engulfed by the tyranny of the majority -- and internally this tyranny will be justified as being in line with the dominant religion. This has been the case in every Muslim country and especially Arab-Muslim countries. (It has also been true of other none Muslim countries.)
The act of voting in and of itself took a great effort on the part of the U.S. This was achieved with practically no help from anyone outside the Anglo world. If one was being honest, it was undermined substantially by all the Arab countries, all of Europe with the exception of England, and the U.S. Democratic party. It has now finally occurred surpassing all expectations. The concern now should be that Americans, and in particular supporters of the current administration, are going to confuse voting with liberal values, i.e. individualism, pluralism, and equal participation.
We have already seen that the voting was limited. Jews who left Iraq under threat were not allowed to vote, especially if they immigrated to Israel. This already indicated a bigotry that should have been declared unacceptable; but, as usual, we keep quite because the Iraqis are too primitive to understand and they may be offended at American insistence at equality.
We have made this mistake before. Is there any real belief that, except for a civil war, there is any possibility of understanding of Western liberal values on the part of the Iraqi society?