Quote Originally Posted by Rex Brynen View Post
It depends, of course, which militant Islamists we're talking about. Some (Hizbullah, Hamas) are indeed mass movements. Others (AQ, PIJ) are small networks of cadres.

I agree that many of the latter won't change their orientation if ME peace breaks out and Arab authoritarianism begins to succumb to third-wave democratization. However, I do think there would be significantly fewer of them, and the challenge would be much more manageable.

(For the record, I don't think either regional change--peace or democracy--is likely soon, nor did I ever think that the Bush administration had a coherent or feasible democratization strategy of any sort whatsoever.)
I think it's pretty significant that the former category has only attacked us on their home turf, while the latter have struck us here.

On the democratization idea, the way I'm playing that in my book is that it was based on a complete misunderstanding of the Reagan administration. I y believe Bush badly wanted to be another Reagan. He saw the wave of democratization that took place in the former Soviet bloc in the 1980s and 1990s and concluded, "Gee, this is easy." In other words, he totally misunderstood the cultural and historical differences between Eastern Europe and the Arab world. I can write that off to his inexperience. But I will never for the life of me understand why brilliant people like Perle, Wolfowitz, Feith, Kristol, Muravchik, etc. couldn't see this.