To be needlessly harsh: What, you think the solution is to keep them all supressed under pro-western dicatorships?! Hardly a compassionate solution...

OK, Beatnicksalad, let's hear yours.

Beatniksalad is taking the moral position here: people, having human rights, deserve democracy.

Billmon is taking the U.S. (and global) security position here: Islamists are dangerous, so the world will not be a better place when heavily Islamic countries get the vote.

Both, it seems to me, are true.

What we're waiting for is an Enlightenment period to hit the Islamic world. Then democracy will be much safer in Islamic countries.

Our Enlightenment hit us about 17 or 18 centuries after Christianity hit the scene; on that timetable, we can hope that theirs is just around the corner.

Until then, though, I have to pray that Pervez Musharraf, who's really a dick, stays in control. The alternative--a bunch of Al Qaeda-sympathetic ISI guys giving a nuke away to blast New Delhi, perhaps--is just too scary to contemplate.

Remember Luxor a few years back? If Mubarak were not the Very Bad Man that he so clearly is, how many more atrocities might Islamic Jihad (the Egyptian version) have perpetrated?

Those guys we need, unfortunate though it may be. Now, the Saudis are a different matter; they're like Musharraf used to be: they encourage the very Islamists who, given the chance, would overthrow the state, and as long as the Islamists are threatening other countries, it's fine with these Wahabbist plutocrats.

OMFG. The hawks are applying to foreign policy the same formula they are using at home: force a crisis that will wreck whatever it is they want to get rid of. Be it 'drowning the government in a bathtub' by bankrupting the budget, or getting rid of international law and geopolitical stability, chaos favors the bold and well-funded. Especially if they planned for it well ahead....

"as long as the Islamists are threatening other countries, it's fine with these Wahabbist plutocrats."

The Saudis are a classic case of "can't live with them, can't live without them." One the one hand, they've become captives of the Whahabbi tiger they rode to power; on the other hand, they've done a pretty good job of keeping oil prices stable and relatively low -- particularly since the mid-80s.

Until 9/11, the prevailing US attitude was that you've got to take the bitter with the sweet. I don't know how that can be reconciled with the neocons' democratic "vision" of a new Middle East. It probably can't in anything other than the short run. So we'll probably push them to "reform" -- and then watch in horror when they collapse like the Romanovs.

The larger point about encouraging democracy in the Middle East is that if we are going to do that, we're going to need to have a little more respect for public opinion in the region.

If we aren't going to rely on "pro-Western dictatorships" to keep the lid on, then we're going to find it hard to continue to be so blatently one-sided in our approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,. We're also going to have to find a way to accomodate Islamic values, including some that both liberals and conservatives find medieval and distasteful -- because those are also the dominant political values in the region now.

Since we aren't going to do either of those things , and since the Islamic Enlightment is probably going to be a long time coming, we probably need to reconcile ourselves to the local thugocrats. Because the alternative, as we are seeing in Iraq, isn't democracy -- it's full-scale U.S. military occupation.

We could always lend them our Constution.. after all, we're not using it..

Constitution, United States of America: eBay item 3611406392

Billmon, the NPR report of this poll said that even Israelis thought the US favored the Israel side over the Palestinians. The only country where people didn't believe that was the US.

U.S. policies toward the Middle East come under considerable criticism in the new poll. In 20 of 21 populations surveyed - Americans are the only exception - pluralities or majorities believe the United States favors Israel over the Palestinians too much. This opinion is shared in Israel; 47% of Israelis believe that the U.S. favors Israel too much, while 38% say the policy is fair and 11% think the U.S. favors the Palestinians too much.

I keep thinking that the destruction of the gang in power is a nightmare. Whenever I see one more predicted result come true, I become enraged, depressed and frightened. It is hard to see how we humans will survive their ruthless carelessness.

Thanks for your reply Billmon.

The Pew research report also indicates a growing desire for democracy in the arab world. Your statement that 'islamists are dangerous' rather depends on how you define 'Islamist'.

Fundamentalism is mainly growing as a result of what is seen as (and I would concur) the US meddling in the middle east's affairs.

I think we should support democratic movements in the middle east and support democratic governments, whether or not their people like us, and I think that the single most damaging thing we can ever do is support tyrants, regardless of how well they will keep their 'dangerous' populations supressed.

Regarding Pakistan: The NorthWest Fronbtier province has already fallen to fundamentalism due to our failure to make things any better in neighbouring Afghanistan. Supporting democracy in Afghanistan would give Musharaf more ability to reform his country rather than repress its dissident elements.

At the moment we've done so much nasty hypocritical stuff that it's hard to take a moral position going forward, due to the instability that would result. But I believe that if we do take a moral position, supporting democracies, working dfor peace and opposing dictatorships (peacefully), then over time we'll sort out our problems.