For "competent", I think an adequate definition would be "Having the institutions in place that encourage technological innovation and then allow the fruits of that innovation to spread freely through the population."<p>Happiness is a funny thing, because it tends to depend more on relative status than on absolute standard of living.  We can look back <i>now</i> and say those people were so primitive and boy am I glad I live today (well, except you ;-)), but that doesn't really the fact that we murdered a few million people who were probably quite happy with their life the way it was.  It'd probably be morally unacceptable today, but it happened.<p>I'm not trying to make a moral judgment here.  My comment is an argument based on facts - "this is what happened, this is how things tend to work extrapolating from what happened, and here is why it is still relevant today."  If you want to make a morality play out of it, go for it - I don't exactly think that the native American genocide or Bush's justification for Iraq was a particularly nice thing to do either.  But I think a debate on how things work is a bit more productive than a debate on how things <i>should</i> work.<p>"This statement seems extraordinarily naive to me. What is it based on?"<p>It's based largely on personal memory of a lot of the things said during the lead-up to the invasion.  "Beacon of democracy" was used several times in his press releases to drum up support for the war.  The "domino theory" of liberalization was discussed in my International Relations course.  In both the Bush and Kerry campaigns, there were widespread discussions about how to "win the peace".