The estimable Kevin Drum, aka CalPundit, opines (echoing Matthew Yglesias):

Liberals have mostly been too busy protesting the war itself to spend any time pressuring the administration about post-war Iraq, and while this is understandable it also leaves a clear field for the neocon hawks in the administration to set any post-war policy they like.
But if there's a post-war agenda for liberals, promotion of democracy and human rights ought to be it. George Bush has repeatedly shown himself unwilling to take electoral risks — this is the big difference between him and Tony Blair — so it's up to the Democrats to make this issue their own. It's the right thing to do both morally and practically, and we should be willing to fight for it.

I agree - both liberals and conservatives should be willing to fight for it, and hopefully that is indeed one thing our troops are about to fight for.
But Mr. Drum falls into the same trap that has ensnared other smart liberals: instinctively assuming that this goal is not held by the "neocon hawks." But - to recap what I've posted on before - it is precisely those "neocon hawks," or "Likudniks," or "velociraptors," or "pencil necks who had their lunch money stolen by the cool kids," or ______ (insert your favorite slur here) who are most in favor of democratizing Iraq. The Powellites, usually given much more respect by hawkish liberals, are the administration faction that would be willing to install some allegedly-friendly general, beat a hasty retreat from Iraq and declare victory:

This is a notion regarded with deep skepticism at the State Department, where Powell and others tend to see the aftermath of an invasion as a long, world-class headache administered by an American general.
...Iraqi democracy, it should be said, is not the president's declared purpose of ''regime change'' in Iraq, which is to get rid of a very bad man with a fondness for terrorists and a hunger for weapons of hideous power. But it is, to many in the administration, including Wolfowitz, a large part of the enticement.

So Drum and other liberals rightly concerned about the possibility that the Bush administration may fail to follow through on democratization should swallow their qualms and make common cause with those "neocon hawks." Besides, many of them were former liberals.