Gideon Rachman has a good column in the Financial Times in which he argues against the fashionable impulse to ditch democracy promotion simply because President Bush is in favor of it. Rachman, hardly a firebreathing pro-democracy evangelist, says (rightly, in my view) that the problem with Bush’s democracy agenda has not been that it is too radical but that Bush has been too hesitant to back up his soaring words with appropriate actions.
But that doesn’t mean that the goal of spreading democracy should be abandoned by the U.S. or its allies. As Rachman writes:

Historical events usually throw up people who will push for political freedom at crucial moments. When such people emerge—whether they are Chinese students in Tiananmen Square, Burmese monks in Rangoon, Nelson Mandela in South Africa or Ayman Nour in Egypt—they deserve the strong support of the outside world.