[the invisib1e hand]

The great American experiment is failing.

Not.

[inottawa]

By helping to bring democracy to the Middle East, generations of young middle easterners will value life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness too much to help out the Islamic fascists when the call on home to help their efforts here. I used to think that too, but here are the results. Palestinian Authority holds elections Hamas wins Lebanon holds elections Hezbollah wins 18 per cent of the vote Iraq constitution based on the principles of Shiri'a Afghanistan same thing. You can't change these people.

[bushinohio]

You cannot change these terrorists for the better. Many people still need to realize that they want us ALL dead. I think Tom Delay put it best when he said, "You put them in a cell or you put them in the cemetery."

[Rickster Norfolk VA]

It is time to take the war on terror seriously. One way to help save the American experiment is to change the dynamics of the original breeding spots for this terrorism. By helping to bring democracy to the Middle East, generations of young middle easterners will value life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness too much to help out the Islamic fascists when the call on home to help their efforts here. Furthermore, by rooting out the terror networks there it will make the networks being developed here exponentially weaker.

Much of what you said makes sense and seems right. But in this excerpt you imply that a democratic approach will somehow root out the terror networks. I fail to see how that would be a logical sequence. Terrorist cells can exist, or even expand, in a free and democratic society. As we are seeing here, the supporters or apologists can use democratic structures to block effective measures to contain or reverse such insidious threats. There's nothing illegal about what Harry Reid or George Soros have said, even if it is very wrong-headed and enables the enemy. Freedom of speech is necessary.

A democratic and open, free society is genetically subject to any number of anti-democratic diseases. The democracy experiment will fail if we do not sufficiently respect how fragile it is, and if we do not address those threats that use its strength to tear it down. It's a tricky business, but it can be done.

George Bush was on some level trying to make the point in Iraq that there is an alternative to radicals and terrorism. We can pray that he was right, because if not we are in deep yogurt. This follows the Christian model that says there is an alternative to sin and evil.