Of course, it will take time to see what evolves, but I sure hate to think of all the American, British, Australian, Polish, Italian (etc.) blood that will have been spilt just to establish another Islamic theocracy.
I hope I am wrong about this.
"(if democracy is defined by human rights, rights of women, rights of free speech, etc.)"
Democracy does not define human rights, rights of women, rights of free speach etc.. It is a method of choosing a body of elected officials that will run the government.
Please I am not being critical of anyone at our site. But let us continue to work out in our minds what by western terms defines a democracy. They get it at this point. They already have had a country wide voting process that elected a body of officials. That is democracy at work.
Let us also remember that the POTUS had made clear a long time ago, that the final form of government the Iraq's would decide on was up to them, not us. He even made it clear, that if they expressed a desire to run their government based on theocratic principles, e.g. Islam (Shara law), then that was their perfect right to do so.
I think we (we all care very much about a lot of good things), somehow equate in our minds the elective process with how a government establishes a set of laws. We by default in this country and in most western democracies, had established our body of laws based on the Judea/Christain standard.
How can we expect a Islamic nation to mimic this? It is unrealistic. What we should do is keep focused on the reasons for going to war with Iraq. They being and not an exhaustive list:
1) remove Saddam from power, based on agreed UN resolutions.
2) destroy Iraq's capability to make war with neighbors, find and destroy all WMD's, and root out known Al Qaida terrorist cells known to exist in Iraq prior to the war.
3) help them rebuild an extremely disfunctional infrastructure.
4) help them establish a new method of electing a federal/provincal/local government(s), using common democratic principals, and obviously associated with this, help them establish where required, new methodologies to re-structure their government bodies to enhance the capabilities to maintain a democratic process in the future.
5) Provide security and stabilization operations while the above items are put into place.
6) Train and build up a new army and security force that will be able to protect the interest of Iraq's peoples and future oil/commercial/other business ventures, re-establish their institutions of higher learning etc..
So my friends. What they choice to guide their bodies of laws is their business. But do consider, after a carefull analysis, this administration never implied that we want to change Iraq into a Judeo/Christian nation. To do so would, I am afraid, to be in error.