This is all very true. The difficulty lies of course in how one goes about exporting democracy (and importing it as well - every "democratic" country needs to engage in a bit of navel-gazing, otherwise they'll just get carried away with their own propaganda).
People in the least the sense that the "liberated" nations need to actually feel that the invading force are actually liberators. This was obviously the case for France in WWII and Kuwait in 1991. But it is certainly not the recent conflict in Iraq.
Re: Not so surprising
This is all very true. The difficulty lies of course in how one goes about exporting democracy (and importing it as well - every "democratic" country needs to engage in a bit of navel-gazing, otherwise they'll just get carried away with their own propaganda).
People in the least the sense that the "liberated" nations need to actually feel that the invading force are actually liberators. This was obviously the case for France in WWII and Kuwait in 1991. But it is certainly not the recent conflict in Iraq.
Hopefully that lesson will be learnt.