What The American Colossus May Read Upon Waking From Uneasy Dreams

From The Brookings Institution:
"Hubris, the ancient Greeks taught, is followed by Nemesis; overbearing presumption always finds the goddess of divine retribution and vengeance baying at its heels. Washington is learning that painful lesson again today -- and Iraqi civilians and American troops are paying the price for the pride that drove the United States to try to implant democracy on the cheap in the heart of the Arab world."
Daniel L. Byman, Nonresident Senior Fellow, Saban Center for Middle East Policy

From the Heritage Foundation:
"Washington should remember that the British, welcomed as liberators in Baghdad in 1917 after defeating the Ottoman Empire, were the target of the "Great Iraqi Revolution" three years later. That uprising took the British more than four months to quell, at the cost of 450 British dead and 1,250 wounded, and was followed by repeated tribal and nationalist uprisings until 1936. Britain established the trappings of democracy--a constitution, parliament, king, and council of ministers--but British meddling, Iraqi political corruption, and the government's inability to meet basic needs discredited democracy in the eyes of many Iraqis. Iraq's army eventually terminated Iraq's democratic experiment, staging 15 coups between 1936 and 1968, when Saddam Hussein's Baath Party finally seized power."
Democracy, Federalism, and Realism in Postwar Iraq by James A. PhillipsExecutive Memorandum #873

From the Liberty Fund:
"To this very ingenious reasoning, and these refined distinctions between natural and social rights, the people may possibly object, that in delivering themselves passively over to the unrestrained rule of others on the plea of controling their inordinate inclinations and passions, they deliver themselves over to men, who, as men, and partaking of the same nature as themselves, are as liable to be governed by the same principles and errors; and to men who, by the great superiority of their station, having no common interest with themselves which might lead them to preserve a salutary check over their vices, must be inclined to abuse in the grossest manner their trust. To proceed with Mr. Burke’s argument—should the rich and opulent in the nation plead their right to the predominant sway in society, from its being a necessary circumstance to guard their wealth from the gripe of poverty, the men in an inferior state of fortune might argue, that should they give way to this plea in all its extent, their moderate possessions would be exposed to the burden of unequal taxes; for the rich, when possessed of the whole authority of the state, would be sure to take the first care of themselves, if they should not be tempted to secure an exoneration of all burthens, by dividing the spoils of the public; and that the abuse of such high trusts must necessarily arise, because to act by selfish considerations, is in the very constitution of our nature.
To such pleas, so plausibly urged on all sides, I know of no rational objection; nor can I think of any expedient to remove the well grounded apprehensions of the different interests which compose a commonwealth, than a fair and equal representation of the whole people;—a circumstance which appears very peculiarly necessary in a mixed form of government, where the democratic part of the constitution will ever be in danger of being overborne by the energy attending on its higher constituent parts. "
From Catharine Macaulay, Observations on the Reflections of the Right Hon. Edmund Burke, on the Revolution in France (1790).