Actual Democracy Promotion

After much foot-dragging, the Bush administration decided to make the right call and not give Uzbekistan a pass on its human rights violations. The lion's share of credit goes to the congressional leaders who got the certification procedure inserted into the aid package in the first place, and who seem to have kept up the pressure for the past year, but obviously the administration could have resisted that pressure pretty easily if they'd wanted to. As the Post editorial suggests, Egypt would be a nice next stop for the rights/aid linkage train. . . .