Mario Loyola’s post demonstrates how far things have fallen since 9/11. He says, as other revisionists have maintained, that the “Bush Doctrine” is the imperative to spread democracy. That is just nonsense. The Bush Doctrine, as announced in the days after 9/11 and as enthusiastically supported by the American people, holds that jihadists are our enemies and that regimes that support their terror have the choice of being with us or against us, the consequence of the latter choice being that we will treat them as terrorists. The administration has walked back from this doctrine in the last few years, but it remains the only sensible blueprint for victory.

It is a doctrine that is broadly supported by the American people. But revisionists, instead, say the Bush Doctrine means terrorism will be defeated by spreading democracy. This is the central theme of the second inaugural address — years after the Bush Doctrine was first announced. But it has always been preposterous. There is no evidence — NONE — that adopting democracy means defeating terrorism, or that country A becoming democratic means country B is safe from terrorist attack. In fact, the opposite is true — terrorists have proved incredibly adept at using the freedoms of democratic societies to abet their activities (witness the 9/11 attacks, planned in, e.g., Hamburg, California, Connecticut, Arizona, Massachusetts, New York, etc.; witness the attacks in Madrid and London, planned and carried out in those democratic societies.)

The Muslim Brotherhood is a disgusting organization. Its alumni include bin Laden, Zawahiri, the Blind Sheikh, et al. It matters not whether “the Ikwhan” expressly supports violence; its theories compel violence. Moreover, what it wants is not individual liberty; it is an Islamic Sharia state. The Bush administration, with its “democracy” infatuation, has decided that anyone who is willing to participate in an electoral process is a “moderate” and a “democrat” — even if what the purported moderate democrat wants to accomplish through the electoral process is the antithesis of democracy, civil rights and individual freedom. If that’s what the Bush Doctrine has become, we need a new doctrine.