Mid-East Democracy

"Can the spread of democracy in the Middle East have an effect on the war against the Islamists? That is a question that only the history of the coming decades will conclusively answer. Skeptics rightly claim that if Arab countries were democracies rather than autocratic tyrannies, Islamists, not liberal democrats, would win. But liberalization of the Islamic world, and the eradication of regimes that use hatred of Israel and the West to control the rage of their subjugated peoples, is the only possible way to change the culture of hate that animates the terrorists and their supporters. Concessions by Israel or the West will not end the jihadist dream. The transformation of the Arab and Islamic world into one where freedom -- rather than fundamentalism -- rules may seem like a fantasy. Without it, this war on Islamist terror will go on without end."
--Jonathan Tobin, Editorialist