Cliff, again, I agree with most of what you write. I believe we have to try to change the Middle East, and it might prove possible the way other ambitious geo-political projects in the past were. But two things. 1) I obviously wasn’t suggesting that supporting Musharraf was post-Bush policy, since it is current Bush policy. My point was only that if you think that’s a sensible policy, you should heap a little less scorn on the idea of propping up friendly, autocratic SOB’s, as you did in your initial post; 2) I really object to the idea that maintaining the status quo would be un-worthy of our great nation. If the nature of Arab politics didn’t have any bearing on our security–and I agree with you that, unfortunately, that it does–I wouldn’t be too exercised about the Middle East and, of course, wouldn’t support pouring anything like the resources we are now into that part of the world. Nor would many other Americans, I suspect. We would be perfectly content not to have to undertake this kind of global crusade, and we would still be a worthy and great nation.