Why the push for Arab democracies?

John Podhoretz, taking the role of savvy political observer in today's New York Post, provides some important illumination on the Bush Administration's continued appeal for democracy in the Arab World.

Podhoretz writes as a follow-up to a Rich Lowry piece in the current National Review (only available by subscription) about the "to-hell-with-them hawks." Lowry describes them as "conservatives who are comfortable using force abroad, but have little patience for a deep entanglement with the Muslim world, which they consider unredeemable, or at least not worth the strenuous effort of trying to redeem." They dismiss the president's explanation that freedom is a common longing throughout the world as "ludicrous sentimentality . . . Muslims don't want it and they don't deserve it and we shouldn't be trying to give it to them," Podhoretz writes of the hell hawks' position.

But.

Here's Podhoretz's conclusion, which reminds us that immediate withdrawal and isolationism are not options, that there really is no alternative:

What's missing here is what has been missing from the most hard-headed discussions of Iraq since the end of the 2004 election, and that is an understanding of just why President Bush formulated the freedom doctrine.

The problem is that the policies advocated by the "hell hawks" and by defeatist Democrats offer no real possibility of an end to the war against Islamic radicalism. It will go on forever.

And if it does, it seems certain that at some point in the next few decades, millions of people are going to die in a successful terrorist assault using weapons of mass destruction.

Why? Because there is no way to stop the delivery of such a weapon if the delivery system is a single person willing to die to get it done. The only way to prevent it is to change the terms under which such people live, to offer them something to hope for besides virgins in paradise.

Seen in this light, the Bush freedom doctrine isn't simply a starry-eyed exercise in ludicrous optimism. It's a real-world solution to a real-world problem.

The only real answer to the Bush freedom doctrine is the one posed by those who believe there is no real War on Terror. They range from the Michael Moore, Bush-may-have-been-involved types to ex-neocon Francis Fukuyama, who states plainly that Bush & Co. overestimated the threat from terrorism.

Fukuyama basically believes 9/11 was a fluke, a lucky shot. It would be nice if he were right. But it would be reckless to the point of insanity for any American policymaker to count on it. Just as it would be for any American policymaker to adopt the view of the to-hell-with-them hawks.

The Democratic Party, which will oppose Bush on any issue, continues to demonstrate its failure to grasp this important point -- and for all of Bush's failures, the fact remains that this country will be more vulnerable with the Democrats in control.