Not unexpected, the partisans on both sides, Kerry and Bush, are seeking election battling points.

I could, to be frank, give a fuck about election points insofar as I end up living the actual policy in action.

Now, reality. Reality is that short term policy goals (stability, acquiesence to US policy) are fundamentally at odds with long term policy goals (democratisation) in the region. Reality is that democratisation and freer press will in the short run produce anti-US commentary and anti-US policy - if we take US policy in the context of a rather blind and not terribly creative support for the appearance of "secularism" or quasi-secular states, blind support for Israel regardless of the need for a more balanced approach, and policy that plays to the rather simplest of views on the MENA region.

Real democratisation in the short term (5-10) years will produce Islamist regimes, will initially produce stricter social regimes (i.e. regression on the image level if not reality on women's rights) and produce less friendly regimes in re US FP in the region. It might produce less investment friendly regimes, but I think actually probably Islamic regimes in the end will end up being more friendly to investors than the pseudo secular ones.

Now, Islamophobes or polite bigots will likely clap loudly at the posturing, and go on about how "we" can not "allow" sharia regimes in Iraq, etc., Islamist threat and all that. The reality is, if the rhetoric of democracy is to work in the long run, it has to allow popular decisions, and allow the societies in question to work out their issues.

The Bush initiative is throroughly incoherent insofar as it engages in rather magical thinking in regarding to what 'democracy' will really mean and what a free press will mean - magically thinking that free press will mean pro-American, and rather not dealing with the contradictions.

I have seen no signs of the American administration actually grappling with these issues, which to give credit to them on a level, are highly difficult, even intractable in the near term.