■"Department of 'Whatever It Takes,'" by Kenneth T. Walsh and Thomas Omestad, U.S. News & World Report, 28 November 2005, p. 20.

Poll data that says the experts in America overwhelmingly believe any attempt to bring democracy to Iraq will fail, but that a majority of American citizens believe this effort will ultimately succeed.

The answer is, of course we'll succeed in bringing democracy to Iraq. The only questions are, "How long it will take?" And, "At what cost?"

The future of this planet, in a security sense, will center around the task of replacing bad governments with good ones. We tend to call this process "nation-building," assuming that if we build good governments, then we'll get stable societies.

In reality, this process is defined by creating connectivity first and foremost, which allows for rising economic transaction rates, which creates both appropriate risk sharing and a broad social desire to protect what's been created and is being created. That's when you start to see a good government. That's when you'll succeed, over the long haul, in creating stable democracies.

As I say in BFA, "Rome wasn't built in a day, and not as a democracy."

So we need to learn about whatever it takes. We need to master what I call "development in a box," or the post-conflict/post-disaster/post-whatever push package that our SysAdmin Force needs to bring to bear in bad spots at their absolute lowest points.

Whatever it takes? I call it the Department of Everything Else. It'll come not because the experts want it, but because the public will demand it.

The 2,000-plus dead in this peace-waging-effort-gone-awry make its emergence inevitable.

It's the only monument that will matter in the future.