The U.S. political elite should abandon their noble duty of “spreading democracy.”

As we all know, the invasion and occupation of Iraq was originally about weapons of mass destruction.

“[WMDs were] the only issue everyone could agree on,” one of the principal architects, Paul Wolfowitz, said in a Vanity Fair interview.

However, it soon became apparent that there were no WMDs. But who cares; it was about spreading democracy after all.

In fact, the summer after the invasion, there was democracy in Iraq. Spontaneous free elections popped up across all the cities and provinces of the country, as Naomi Klein reports in her new book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.

Believing their president and his assurance of spreading democracy, U.S. troops even built ballot boxes and helped organize the local elections.

Unfortunately, this posed a threat to Washington’s version of democracy, so just after his second month in the country, L. Paul Bremer — the administration’s point man in Iraq — put an immediate end to all local elections.

“The election had to be canceled. Bremer would not allow the wrong guy to win the election,” wrote General Bernard Trainor and Michael Gordon in their military history of the invasion, Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq.

“I’m not opposed to [free elections], but I want to do it in a way that takes care of our concerns … ” Bremer said to The Washington Post.

In fact, the whole “purple thumb” elections in January 2005 would have never happened if Washington had had its say in how democracy was to be exercised.

“After three schemes by the U.S.-led occupation coalition to implant someone (read: Western-friendly dictator) who ‘takes care of our concerns,’ when [Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani] turned huge numbers of his followers out onto the streets (in massive, nonviolent demonstrations) to demand free elections, Washington had little choice but to agree,” Alan Richards observed in Middle East Policy.

That is apparently what “democracy” means after all: free elections are fine as long as “our concerns” are met. When the “wrong guy” wins, however, it’s not democratic — quite the opposite, in fact.

Talk of un-democratic regimes conjures up memories of Mohammed Mossadegh of Iran and Salvador Allende of Chile — both of whom apparently had the temerity to nationalize their countries’ natural resources and institute social programs for their poor — threatening American “strategic interests.”

Thankfully, the United States government, with the help of the CIA and local “freedom fighters,” overthrew those wicked men and installed our version of democracy.

And now, sinister characters like Hugo Chávez of Venezuela and Evo Morales of Bolivia are following in these wretched footsteps. All these vicious tyrants enjoy overwhelming support and were popularly elected by their countries’ majorities; unfortunately,

“our concerns” were not met, so we have to show them how to run a proper democracy.

As our democracy-spreading mission in Iraq demonstrates, some people just aren’t ready for true democracy. Eighty to 90 percent majorities in Iraq want the United States (along with our permanent military bases) to leave as their country is destroyed.

So I say again: Let’s stop spreading democracy. They don’t want it. They can’t handle it. Besides, the $20 million an hour it’s costing the United States in the Middle East could go to something useful, like a bridge to nowhere in Alaska, for example.