The January/February 2007 issue of The Atlantic offers an article by Niall Fergusson titled “A War to Start All Wars” which begins:

The United States invaded Iraq in April 2003 for multiple reasons, but the most ambitious was a desire to remake a whole region. The Middle East, it was argued, was full of political and economic underachievers, driven to violence by a Muslim/Arab inferiority complex. Replacing Saddam Hussein with an exemplary democracy would begin a domino effect, spreading American values to Iraq’s most undemocratic neighbors. Read more…