Democracy in the Middle East?

Lisa Anderson recently posed the question in an editorial in the Christian Science Monitor

[A]re liberty and democracy really served by elections mounted largely to please an international patron like the US? Do these elections really take the sounding of popular opinion, or are they simply designed to placate an American administration anxious to show progress in the region?

She concludes by saying

the US needs to be careful about what it calls a successful democratic election in the Middle East. Too many dashed expectations run the risk of creating a generation of disenchanted, cynical ex-voters who thought the candidates, and their Western backers, were going to deliver real goods, not simply the temporary satisfaction of an inked finger

What do you think?