The long haul and a long war requires hope. Churchill and FDR had an Atlantic Charter and a United Nations to hold out as a vision. Truman presented the world the Marshall Plan, NATO and midwifed the seed that became the EU. Today the Bush administration champions democracy promotion which realist and partisan critics already are declaring to be dead on arrival. The critics are wrong.

Democracy however is a longitudinal game, a long-term bet and not a quick fix. Importantly, it is an option that plays on the moral level of conflict. What else is there to offer on the other side as an equivalent ? Dictatorship ? A Caliphate ? Who is going to buy that except at the point of a gun ? Our Islamist opponents are left with little more to offer their people than nihilism and martyrdom, poverty and war.

HAMAS, a terrorist organization, has been elected to govern the Palestinian territories because there was no other realistic option for Palestinian voters except Fatah corruption and thuggery. The Israelis are now sorely tempted to preemptively destroy the PA rather than let it fall under HAMAS control. This is an error. Let HAMAS first fail at governing through economic incompetence and weary the Palestinian people with religious zealotry. Liberal alternatives will emerge if the Islamists are given time to discredit themselves and if HAMAS initiates terrorism anew, then they have provided Israel with a casus belli for their own destruction.

We should look with a keen eye at our own faults without flinching but our faults and mistakes are not the whole story. We have tremendous strengths as well and we should begin to use them.

Page 2 of 2 | Previous page