[theapportioner]

Speaking of His Majesty the Shah, it was an Iranian popular revolt that led to his sacking. A rejection of a blatant attempt at Westernization, and a corrupt regime. Yes, the United States helped to bring him to power. But this revolt, I think, did not come about because of American micro-meddling necessarily, but because of a rejection of over-Westernization, essentially.

Many different groups, ideologies, participated in the revolt, but it was the fundamentalists that ultimately took power. People forget this -- they assume it was always a fundamentalist revolt.

Now, 70% of Iranians are under 30 years old, because of a baby boom inspired by the revolution. They want reforms. By many accounts the fundamentalist facade is collapsing. The revolution is dying. What does this remind me of? The Soviet Union.

My points:

1) Popular will exists in the "Islamic world", at least in the Iranian case.

2) The reform of Iranian government, and civilization, should take its natural course. Hegemonistic meddling, even in neighboring countries, will hurt this natural course. Will it prevent it? Maybe, depends on how far the US will go.

3) I believe that, if we improved relations with the "Islamic world" generally, it will lead to the openness and the moderating of ideology that we are seeing in China. Of course this will take time.

4) Any reconstruction of Iraq's political structure will have to take a local flavor. We cannot simply transplant our Constitution there. We should be wary of over-Westernization. It will have to give the utmost respect to Islam, and balance the tensions of the various ethnic groups within Iraq. But what does the Bush administration know about Islam?