> I'd say that people should be allowed to manage their own affairs.

> If a country is better off with a dictator, then so be it.

Those do not mesh. Democracy _is_ allowing people to manage their own affairs.

Not when that democracy is imposed by an external force. There is nothing organic about, say, a US-sponsored democracy in Afghanistan or Iraq

Democracy is indeed.

But when external forces try to impose democracy on a society not ready for it, typically all you get is a civil war netween local mini-dictators. E.g. Lybia, Egypt, Afghanistan, Iraq, countless African nations, etc.

Well-meaning Westerners like to imagine that all one has to do is put on a fair election, get the "good people" in power, and all will be well thereafter. This can be effected by Western occupiers when they want to wash their hands as they exit some troubled spot.

The occupiers don't want to hear that democracy is sustained by values and habits taught by parents to children who are still young enough to listen. Once the boys are old enough to hold a gun, that kind of learning is pretty much over.

Doesn't help that in any democratic setup, the people with the means to fight elections are usually the people who are already close to, or embedded in the previous dictatorial setup.

This is the post-colonial story across the world. The people who came into power after the colonizers left were direct beneficiaries of the colonial rule

Usually the country is "better off" as a whole on the backs of the few who will suffer tremendously in order to achieve that.