Michael, thank you for the kind words. I would have thought it obvious from the piece (and much else I have written on the subject — see e.g. this NRO review of The Iranian Time Bomb by some guy named Ledeen) that I was profoundly influenced by your position on Iran and the overall failure of U.S. strategic vision.

But with due respect (which is a lot of respect), you and I are in very different places on Islam/Islamism. I haven’t said “you don’t exist.” Conceding the time you have obviously spent on these issues, you still seem to me to wind up with the Tony Blair bottom-line that freedom is a universal value. To be sure, your theory that Iran is the root of most of our problems (with which I agree) acknowledges the tyrannical and revolutionary nature of Islamism: Its hegemonic ambitions and its full menu of jihadist tactics (including domestic and international terrorism, as well as more subtle forms of infiltration and aggression) to get there. Yet, you contend that the remedy for all that is freedom, as if there were no deep-seated difference between Islam and the West over what freedom means.

By your lights, the worst thing for the mullahs would be a “free” Iraq, which would be an inspiration to the oppressed Iranian population to rise up and, with a little help from the West, oust their regime. Indeed, in this you say Iranian Muslims are not materially different from (predominantly) non-Muslim dissidents in the Soviet Empire. You will no doubt correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t see how what you’re arguing is different from what Pete Wehner quotes George Will as having said a few years back: i.e., the Muslim world will be overrun by “a ripple effect, a happy domino effect . . . of democracy knocking over these medieval tyrannies.”

That’s not, however, how it works — or has worked. I stipulate that this conversation is riddled by “what might have beens.” We’ll never know what would have happened if we had actually employed the Bush doctrine after 9/11 and overthrown the mullahs. But what happened in the “free” Iraq after 2003? The people elected the fundamentalist religious parties as their leaders. The State Department helped them write a “democratic” constitution in which Islam was established as the state religion and sharia was made part of the fundamental law. Though I continue to think this was a disastrous thing for us to do (for the reasons set forth in my column), I give State the benefit of the doubt on motives: It’s not that our diplomats wanted it that way; it’s that they thought Iraq’s adoption of a constitution by popular election would be an irrefutable sign of democratic progress (wrong), and they realized that Iraqis would not approve a constitution that did not concede the supremacy of Islam and sharia (right — and the telltale sign of anti-democratic implacability).

Now, you can argue that this was all Iran’s doing, but I think the catalyst here is Islamism (as it is in Iran, for that matter). What has happened in Iraq is about what you would expect in a country whose most influential force, besides Iran, is Ayatollah Sistani, a died-in-the-wool fundamentalist who, when not issuing fatwas about how homosexuals should be “killed in the worst, most severe way of killing,” instructs his flock that non-Muslims are to be deemed in the same category as “urine, feces, semen, dead bodies, blood, dogs, pigs, alcoholic liquors, and the sweat of an animal who persistently eats [unclean things].” And I hate to break this to folks, but as these things go, Sistani is actually pretty tame.

I know you think this will eventually change for the better, but I’m not optimistic about that possibility — certainly not in the foreseeable future. When I look around, I see Islamism, not Islamic reform, on the rise. And I don’t think there’s any parallel to this in the experience of Soviet dissidents, who were (by and large) from a different civilization. Look at the Washington Post story from a couple of weeks ago about Iraq’s new, Iran-controlled ruling coalition (hat tip Diana West). It quotes a 31-year-old Iraqi-in-the-street who says the people will support the new rulers because “this is an Islamic country and we don’t believe in liberalism and secularism[.]… I hope they win again and assign only religious, qualified people to sensitive positions.” Concededly, it’s always possible that the Post would misleadingly present one person as more representative of the general public than he actually is. But I don’t think that’s the case here. When you listen to that guy, you hear a people under the Sistani spell. You hear Islamism. I don’t see how having that kind of “freedom” next door would be any threat to the Iranians — I think it’s a boon for them. Things appear to be going better for the mullahs in Iraq than they are at home.

I’ve already gone on too long, but quickly in response to your other points (all of which deserve more attention than we have time for here):

1. I don’t agree that the Iranian regime could be ousted without the use of military force. Your excellent points (and other reporting at your essential blog) about how the Iranian population is ripe for revolt argues for giving them whatever encouragement we can. But I think the regime’s grip on the levers of brute force is too extensive to be undone without U.S. military intervention. I’m familiar with the arguments about how moderate elements of the IRGC could get the job done, and I hope those arguments are right and I am wrong, but I’m not optimistic. (As you know, I think vital U.S. interests call for ousting the regime regardless of whether the population is amenable, but the fact that they are amenable certainly helps make the case.)

2. The challenge of Islamism in Iran is more difficult in my mind than you suggest. It’s not as if all the Islamists are in the regime and the population is a bunch of Western democrats. Iran is a fundamentalist Shiite country. If the mullahs are overthrown, the world would be a much better place because an aggressor regime bent on exporting its Islamic revolution would be gone. But I think the best we should hope for is its replacement by a moderate Islamist government which is more interested in governing Iran and content to export Islamism the same way the Saudis do — not good but a significant improvement. Obviously, that would dramatically improve our prospects in Iraq, Afghanistan, and everywhere else.

3. I agree with you that al-Qaeda still has a presence in Afghanistan. I don’t want to speak for Rich, but what I took him to mean, and what I meant, is that al-Qaeda no longer has a base of operations in Afghanistan. But we know it’s in the border region (which means almost by definition that it’s in the country), and there are surely cells elsewhere in-country. The question, of course, is how best to deal with the threat that implies.

4. Finally, as I said in response to Rich, COIN and the democracy project are importantly different but they are closely related. Consequently, I think I’m entitled to treat them as components of the same strategy and to ask: What do we win at the end if COIN works, and is it worth the price? But I did not mean to suggest (and, again, I’m sorry if I appeared to) that serious COIN thinkers are heedless democracy dreamers.