THESE DAYS, ONE SEEKS IN vain for voices who contend that the Cold War was a lost cause. The reason, quite obviously, is that the West's triumph over the forces of communist totalitarianism makes this a decidedly difficult notion to sustain. So why such heated resistance to idea, which finds its most prominent expression in the Bush administration's calls for democracy in the Middle East, that Arab and Muslim tyrannies should share a similar fate? After all, next to the fearsome intercontinental influence once wielded by the Evil Empire, the modest mandates of Middle Eastern potentates qualify them as little...