Of course he wasn't wrong about that. Where he went wrong was thinking it was America's job to "liberate" these people. These things need to happen from within, like we see in Tunisia and Egypt.
This.
Edit: Thinking about it, democracy/liberalism has a pretty poor record in most of Europe too, outside of the United Kingdom, France, Scandinavia, and Belgium/Netherlands.
Actually it took about a century for France to become a functioning democracy after the first French revolution, so that might not be a good example either.
The thing is that all functioning stable democracies has to evolve slowly and peacfully. The UK, Scandinavia, Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, all have one thing in common, they didn't obtain democracy by war or revolution. The only exception to that I can think of is the US, but you guys are the exception that confirm the rule. You can just make a 180 degress turn from complete dictatorship to complete democracy, a country has to have time to mature and have the democracy grow on them.
That being said, getting rid of a dictator like Mubarak would hopefully be the first step on a long road towards democracy.
Actually the UK's situation was in fact built upon several revolutions and uprisings, throughout the 13th and 17th Century you had several mini-Civil Wars... including THE Civil War which laid the groundwork for the current UK system
