‘George W. Bush
has been more emphatic about spreading democracy than any president since
Woodrow Wilson.  

Yet Bush’s
policies have subverted elected governments, corrupted foreign elections, and
tainted democracy itself. For most of the American media, however, Bush’s
pretensions on democracy remain sacrosanct.  

When Bush took
office in 2001, the U.S. already had a long history of meddling abroad in the
name of foreign “self-determination.”  

The National
Endowment for Democracy (NED), a government agency created in 1983, had been
involved in election-manipulation scandals in Panama, Nicaragua, Slovakia, and
elsewhere.  

But the Bush
team sharply ratcheted up both spending and the brazenness of U.S.
interventions. The United States is currently spending more than a billion
dollars a year on democracy promotion.’ 

Defining Democracy
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