"In combat one should be very suspicious of painless moral choices. When you are confronted with a seemingly painless moral choice, the odds are that you haven't looked deeply enough." ~ Karl Marlantes

to the United States and it's bullshit to meddle in the domestic political affairs of other countries, particularly under the banner of "democracy" programs.

How would we like it if we were attacked by some other nation just because they found us to be objectionable?

How would we react if we found out that Saudi Arabia, Israel, Germany, etc. were pouring millions into political campaigns here to impact policy? (Oops, they can do that now under the Citizens United Supreme Court decision--US based companies with foreign ownership can give directly from their treasury, oh well;). But that's not widely known yet.)
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Send the UN to The Hague

Knee jerk reflex like this is not analysis. You want things not to go to kinetics, for things to soft-land to the extent that they can? Civil society development is key.

How much time do you have working to develop civil society institutions? How much time on the ground in the Middle East?

"In combat one should be very suspicious of painless moral choices. When you are confronted with a seemingly painless moral choice, the odds are that you haven't looked deeply enough." ~ Karl Marlantes

argue from authority (or easy, but hard to be taken all that seriously).

I've been to the spent some time in the Middle East but had no urge to "civilize" anyone. I was a guest and enjoyed the hospitality.

The notion of spreading a civil society implies that you come from one. Ours is robust, exciting, but very rough. We should mind our own business and focus on business, but without missionary efforts that mask political manipulation. In addition, while the people are quite civil, the government isn't that way at all, to wit the invasion of Iraq, resulting death and destruction, and the unprovoked regime change in Libya masked as a humanitarian mission (telling the truth is one of the foundations of civility).
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Send the UN to The Hague

...over the span of the late 80's and 90's and I've spent a decade building civil society institutions. The notion that these organizations are engaged in "political manipulation" in any meaningful way is balderdash. The worst that can be said of them is that the civic "openness" that they are seeking to foster is going to end up being used by some fairly Islamic people who hold some ideas that the average North American would find quite unappealing. If you think that's the deliberate policy of the US government - as opposed to something they view as quite an unattractive byproduct - you have greatly misunderstood their perspective.

"In combat one should be very suspicious of painless moral choices. When you are confronted with a seemingly painless moral choice, the odds are that you haven't looked deeply enough." ~ Karl Marlantes

I wasn't aware of that relationship. That only amplifies my suspicion that the White House and Congress are up to some serious meddling for the generals to take a step this radical. They do make money on our aid, although the $1 bil range is not what it used to be. Their financial interests allow them to live quite well. Why would they take the risk? We'll see.

If NED wants to promote democracy (or any of the other NGOs), why not start at home? The chart shows the number for felon disenfranchisement in the states listed. They're quite remarkable. The founders were not reluctant to restrict voting (property owning males only) but they didn't restrict felons and ex felons, These laws trace back directly to post-reconstruction efforts of white Southerners to v of the 90% of black citizens who voted during reconstruction. They succeeded. The fact that only one governor is on record of having reverse this (Crist, FL) is a great commentary on profiles in indifference.

When it comes to NGO's like NED, it is worth taking a deeper look. William Blum wrote a history of the early days and this article, NED and the Empire's New Clothes is a more up to date version. Essentially, NED meddles in the political affairs of other countries. That's bad enough. When the focus is on specific elections, it can get quite aggressive, as it did during the Ukraine 2004 election. NED and others opposing the Russia candidate called election fraud using the very same criteria many of us called fraud on the US 2004 presidential election here. NED was silent on that atrocity.

Carter does some good things and some not so good things. He's candid and will take on tough cases. However, his center, for example, strongly endorsed voter identification cards a few years ago. Voter ID legislation is a code word for keeping poor and minority voters out of the polling booths. But the world is full of surprises. I used to think that Justice Stevens was a reliable benchmark for democracy until he wrote a majority opinion upholding Indiana's voter ID law (The Supreme Court Contracts the Right to Vote).
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I agree, I think that's the goal. We sure didn't like or tolerate Iran's democratic regime in the 1950's or Chile's during Nixon's time.

Outlawed unions were at the core of the Egyptian movement at the start. That wasn't even mentioned here. Now who knows? But we've got a lot of "helpers" over there. It is hard for me to imagine that Potesta or Livingston give two cents for real democracy. Maybe the WH and Congress need a new term for your accurate point about our government and business establishment preferring easy to deal with authoritarian regimes - "Pre-Democracy" regimes. NED could shift to promoting the first step in the evolution of a real democracy - pre-democracy, American style.
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Send the UN to The Hague