The goals of the United States are to maintain and spread the ideals stated in the Constitution: democracy, equality, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, life and liberty; the natural born rights that all people deserve. As citizens of a nation whose government is declared to be “of the people, by the people, and for the people”, Americans have come to see, rightly so, that all these concepts and rights are tightly intertwined. Yet many of our foreign policy mistakes in recent history have come from the erroneous belief that these are seen as a package deal by other nations.

As can be seen by anyone who knows of the rise of Hitler from the democratic processes of the Weimar Republic, ensuring democracy does not always secure freedom. The rule of Bashar al-Assad in Syria was largely supported by the country’s Christian minority because he supported their right to religious freedom and protected them from Islamic extremists, yet he did not respect free speech or the human rights of his civilians. The oppressive theocracy of Iran denies its citizens freedom of speech but was put in place by a popular revolution.

The United States also has failed to recognize when establishing these ideals has come into conflict with American interests and security. Freedom to make your own decisions, after all, means the freedom to make decisions the U.S. doesn’t like. This led to the support of the brutal dictator Augusto Pinochet in Chile, the funding of the civilian-murdering Contras in Nicaragua, and the suspiciously imperialist-reeking Platt Amendments that made Cuba subject to occupation on a whim, to mention just a few instances of contradictory foreign policy. The United States wanted a freedom-loving democracy in South Vietnam as a bulwark against the spread of authoritarian Communism but could only support it through the violation of the right to self-determination.

The very same mistakes are apparent in America’s recent policies in the Middle East. Gaddafi toppled in Libya, Mubarak in Egypt, Hussein in Iraq, and attempts to overthrow Assad in Syria. The United States has supported these revolutions without a realistic plan for them in the future. Politicians seemed to expect that full-fledged progressive democracies respecting all the rights inherent to a true democracy and aligned with American interests would magically appear without the hundreds of years of ingrained respect for the pillars upon which these things stand. The Pentagon has spent millions funding supposedly “moderate” Syrian rebels when UN investigators report that most of the opposition don’t even pretend to want a democracy. It’s possible that American weapons provided to these groups have even ended up in the hands of ISIS, reminiscent of how the Mujahideen terrorists were funded by the U.S. to fight off the Soviets but turned their American-made Stinger missiles on Uncle Sam once the fight was won. Libya has descended into a state of lawlessness. Egypt democratically elected president Mohamed Morsi but quickly fell back into military dictatorship. Why? Because without respect for the principle of the rule of the majority Egyptian democracy could not survive.

This is why we repeatedly fail in the Middle East to make progress toward a brighter, democratic future: we fail to understand the very word democracy. “Democracy” comes from the word “demos”, the common people, and “kratos”, rule. Without the support and understanding of the common people of each Middle Eastern nation, the new and theoretical democracies of the region will never survive. Iraq has fallen again and again to tyranny, fanaticism, chaos, or sectarian division because the people do not strive to support a government of the people. The United States cannot force democracy. Trillions of dollars can be spent, thousands of American soldiers can stain the sands red with their blood, but until Iraqis, Syrians, Egyptians, and Libyans are willing to do the same, to fight and die for their nation and their rights, the