Nice piece in WSJ today by Fouad Ajami. Here is a great bit:

“We don’t know for sure the veracity of recent reports that 3,000 Saudis have found their way to Iraq: The source is a London-based Saudi dissident with his own ax to grind. But were it to be confirmed, the purpose of the jihadists would further underline that the distinction between secular terror and the terror of religiously based movements was always a distinction without substance. It had always been a secular fight. Nor is it a mystery that Syria and Iran thirst for America’s defeat in Iraq. The power that blew into Baghdad came bearing the promise of a new order. Woven into the awesome victory were hopes to reform, some perhaps extravagant. There would rise in Mesopotamia a state more democratic, more secular, no doubt more prosperous, than much of the neighborhood. That state would be weaned from the false temptations of Arab radicalism. Without quite fully appreciating it, we had announced nothing less than the obsolescence of the region’s ruling order.”