Spreading democracy, or exporting K-Street?

Until now, few among the traditional press have mustered up the courage to ask what we are truly exporting abroad?  Is it genuine democracy?  Or is it someone's sick and twisted version of what democracy means to them?

One thing is for sure: if Robert Blackwill has his way, Baghdad will be the new K-Street:

In the spring of 2004, Robert D. Blackwill, then the influential Iraq director on the National Security Council, pushed hard to make Ayad Allawi , a tough, secular Shiite with close ties to the Central Intelligence Agency , the interim prime minister of Iraq.

Mr. Blackwill’s efforts worked. For the next 10 months, until Mr.Allawi’s party lost in the Iraqi elections, he was the first primeminister of the newly sovereign nation — America’s man in Baghdad.

Now,a little more than three years later, Mr. Blackwill is back in the samebusiness: pushing hard to make Mr. Allawi prime minister of Iraq again.But this time, Mr. Blackwill’s powerful lobbying firm, Barbour Griffith& Rogers, is receiving $300,000 from Mr. Allawi for his work.

It took Washington 218 years before it was completely taken over by lobbyists.  Thanks to Blackwill, if Allawi gets elected, the "democracy" in Baghdad will take less than three.

There is a clear difference between representative democracy and cronyism.