RE: The Looming Power Struggle with Iran

"Islamic fundamentalists,” he told me, "consider democratic reform to be like toilet paper. You use it once, and then you throw it away.” There is no doubt in his mind that the Shiites in Iraq are using democracy in this fashion, simply to gain power, with no intention whatsoever of continuing democratic reform beyond that point.

This is exactly what everyone I know who has actually spent time in the Middle East says. So why can't the geniuses in the Bush Administration understand this?

The answer is that understanding isn't what they're after. As with the Soviet Union in the 1960s and 1970s, their aim is to press American-style democracy on their identified "bad boys," regardless of the cost or consequence.