Is the Arab world doomed?

The more I read about this Ibrahim fellow who was imprisoned in Egypt, the more I think that there is little hope for the Arab world, and any change will be slow and internal. The American left will continue to bitch incessantly if we were to dare mess with internal Arab politics, even when we want to stop a genocidal maniac like Sadam Hussain. Then they will complain when we fail to do something like take steps to help free an Egyptian with an American passport who was imprisoned for the crime of teaching democracy to Egyptians - what they referred to as an affront to Egypt.

Americans will continue to be the victims of the Mohammed Attas that come out of this world, and we are in no position to offer any political or educational means toward establishing democracy. It is up the the US to employ military and political pressure on organizations that sponsor terrorism without any real concern for the feeling of the countries whose toes we step on.

If a country as ``moderate'' as Egypt can imprison a 60 something year old guy for talking about democracy there is little reason to believe that we have been making any headway trying to establish human rights or democratic reform. It is not likely that we will.

We must do whatever we can to protect ourselves from the dangers that these countries pose, and we must not feel bad when we try to oust bad leaders or institute reform by force. There have been few good leaders in the Arab world, and we should not fool ourselves in to thinkinking that there will be in the near future. Anyone good has been assasinated and vilified throughout the region (think Sadat). In a region with no rules and no hope, we must be careful. We must not be hopefull. We are addicted to cheap oil, and we ought to take it when it is convenient. There is little else of value there.

There is little hope that there will be anything resembling democracy or human rights in a country unless we actually invade it. There is no reason to believe otherwise. We ought not be squeamish as we are. We will be benefitting ourselves, and all future generations of Arabs by invading Iraq. People who object to our invasion of Iraq are dooming future generations of Iraqies to more terror, secret police, repression, torture, and genocide. Only a left-wing racist would want that.