The American Spectator

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Then we will be back to square one, with our oil supplies hanging precariously in the balance. But Iraq will not become another Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden would find too many radical factions and would end up warring with his neighbors before he could launch any grant new attack on the West.

Russian Communism was a bastardized version of this Oriental despotism, willed to the Russians by the Tatars. The Fall of Communism did not end this autocracy. In many ways, it seems to have strengthened it. But it did puncture the Russian people's messianic certainty that their system was destined to conquer the West.

We do not have to plant democracy in the Middle East in order to achieve the same goal. All we have to do is puncture the myth that "There is no God but Allah" and that Muslims are destined for world conquest. By toppling Saddam Hussein, by decimating Al Qaeda, and by stemming the tide of terror against the West, we have already gone a long ways toward reasserting our hegemony. As for the future of Iraq, let the Sunnis and the Shi'ia fight it out for themselves.

topics:
Islam, Environment, Constitution, Founding Fathers, Iraq, Russia, Communism, Oil