Angelo Codevilla on the "pipe dream" of spreading democracy

How, indeed, does one government transform the alien culture of a whole region on the other side of the globe? . . . Building viable new governments in foreign lands is extraordinarily difficult, and building wholly new regimes near impossible. Native regimes may change culture over generations, but the notion that foreigners who cannot even speak the language can do it in a few years is a pipe dream. Is anything sillier than the notion that American secularists can convince Muslims about what true Islam commands?" (p. viii). ~Angelo Codevilla, quoted in Mises Review editor David Gordon's review of his book No Victory, No Peace.