Clarification/Follow-up by tomder55 on 01/04/06 7:56 am:
Re :Bush doctrine ...

For decades, free nations tolerated oppression in the Middle East for the sake of stability. In practice, this approach brought little stability and much oppression, so I have changed this policy. Bush address to Air Force Academy June 2, 2004


There is some justice in one charge that is frequently leveled against the United States, and more generally against the West: Middle Easterners frequently complain that the West judges them by different and lower standards than it does Europeans and Americans, both in what is expected of them and what they may expect, in terms of their economic well-being and their political freedom. They assert that Western spokesmen repeatedly overlook or even defend actions and support rulers that they would not tolerate in their own countries.

...there is nevertheless a widespread [Western] perception that there are significant differences between the advanced Western world and the rest, notably the peoples of Islam, and that these latter are in some ways different, with the tacit assumption that they are inferior. The most flagrant violations of civil rights, political freedom, and even human decency are disregarded or glossed over, and crimes against humanity, which in a European or American country would evoke a storm of outrage, are seen as normal and even acceptable.

...The underlying assumption in all this is that these people are incapable of running a democratic society and have neither concern nor capacity for human decency."

'The Crisis of Islam', Bernard Lewis.

Bush declared at West Point, "America has no empire to extend or utopia to establish. We wish for others only what we wish for ourselves -- safety from violence, the rewards of liberty, and the hope for a better life."

Where does it become a strategic advantage to promote democracy in the Middle East ? It rests on a widely held premise that democracies rarely wage war on each other .A democratic Middle East ;would be a prosperous Middle East and would cease being a breeding ground for people who want to fly planes into our buildings . Bush makes the assumption that the people of the Middle East are ready to join the modern world .