In short, should one be lazy, there is a move to 'reform' the United States State Department by the Bush Administration.

Given little information, that might or might not be a good thing. I confess I have acquired a reflexive distaste and distrust for any initiative coming out of the Ibnou Ibn Bush, regardless of content as it strikes me the ideologicial Right Bolshy incomptetence in this Administration runs too deep for good things to happen.

Leaving this aside, I thought, leaving aside what I considered ludicrous accusations of partisanship on the part of the US State Department, there were some decent ideas in there.

Most notably, of course, reforming the system by which US diplos are assigned - as well as promoted. Certainly in regards to the assignment system, the merry go round is quite mad and destructive of expertise.

Other suggestions were idiotic (not Zen's one may add) - calling for more political appointees, which of course would make the State Department look like CPA-Iraq.

By the way, I have to say, reading the underlying article linked first by Zen, I have to admit no small degree of sympathy (although not total accord) for this observation:
“Bureaucratic rearrangements are not terribly important,” Ted Galen Carpenter, vice-president for Defense and Foreign Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington, told ISN Security Watch.

“Making democracy promotion a priority moves US foreign policy in the wrong direction, away from defense and tangible goals, and toward utopian ideals,” he said.

If this fellow hears the same sort of things I hear from the Ibnou Ibn Bush on MENA democracy, his somewhat uncharitable formulation makes much sense.

But to hit the narrow point, it all depends on time frames and risk appetite. There is a real critique to be made against supporting the geriatric 'safe' quasi dictators as Mubarek in the name of short term security and taking the long shot approach of supporting more democracy.

However, one should bloody well do so with a realistic idea of what is actually going to happen.