Jon Stewart

Is a damn funny and smart person. Check out article in the WSJ. I think he may be onto to something....

One point of contention I have with Mr. Stewart, who I utterly respect - he says that had the Bush Admin forwarded the "change in the Middle East" thesis, rather than the WMD thesis, he might have been more prone to go with it from the get-go. Since the beginning, this has been the entire reason I supported the Iraq war, and PLENTY of people, particularly Tom Friedman from the MSM and many bloggers, Instapundit, among others, have all been saying this. This is what I find fascinating about liberals - part of me thinks a lot of not supporting the Iraq war had to do with not doing their homework because they didn't like the teacher. This argument has been out there and liberals systematically ignored it. See my post from Dec 9, 2003.

An excerpt:

...the number one reason the Middle East is in a condition where terrorism thrives, are the autocratic governments. Hussein in Iraq, Assad in Syria, and the Royal Family in Saudi Arabia have consistently lined their pockets with oil revenue for the past 25 years without any regard to the people of their country. A combination of greed (for money and power) combined with ineptitude led these autocrats to fuck over their own people. It has also inspired other autocrats on a lesser scale: Arafat in Palestine, Khadaffi in Libya and autocrats of different stripes: Ayatollahs in Iran, Mushareff in Pakisan, and of course, the Taliban.

These autocrats have consistently supported different terrorist groups: Syria runs Hizbollah, Arafat runs Al Asqu Brigades, Khadaffi had his own terrorists hijacking airplanes in the 70s, the Taliban had Al Queda (although this was a unique relationship because it seems like Al Queda ran the Taliban, rather than the other way around). Al Queda successfully blackmailed the Royal Family. Hamas was a “start up” that eventually got financing by Hussein.

However, the point of the “soft argument” is not that all of these guys are partners, because clearly they are not. They hate anyone who disagrees with them. What seems to occur amongst autocrats, are two things: one, their people are neglected and poor and hopeless and two, they encourage the rise of other autocrats. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that similar abuses of power, views on Israel, views on the West, use of particular tactics—specifically terrorism, all occur in the same region. Nor do I think these views are inherent or historically necessary.

What I think is missing from my argument is taking the next step...that while autocratic governments have a tendancy to support one another, liberal, demcractic governments also tend to support one another....we've seen this in Asia and in Eastern Europe. This is what Wolfowitz and the neocons have been saying all along.

Could I have predicted democractic changes in Lebanon? Of course not. In Syria and Saudi Arabia...not really. But I do know and did know then, the pressure to democratize and liberalize would increase with the removal of Saddam from power.

We basically went to the full court press on defense....and while we couldn't predict what specifically this pressure would disrupt, we knew it would throw the other team into confusion and we'd get some steals and easy lay-ups.