OOOH, THAT'S WHAT ROBERTSON IS UPSET ABOUT!

Juan Cole notices something interesting Bush said earlier today while aboard Kerry's future air transport:

"I think the Iraqi people want us to leave once we’ve helped them get on the path of stability and democracy and once we have trained their troops to do their own hard work," Bush said yesterday.

Still, Bush said, "It’s very difficult for me to predict what forces will exist, although I will tell you that Iraq’s leadership has made it quite clear that they can manage their own affairs at the appropriate time."

If free and open Iraqi elections lead to the seating of a fundamentalist Islamic government, "I will be disappointed. But democracy is democracy," Bush said. "If that’s what the people choose, that’s what the people choose."

Ohh, so that's why we invaded Iraq. We wanted to replace a secular dictatorial regime with an Islamic fundamentalist one!

Cole writes:

Since Bush began acting aggressively in the region, the United Action Council of (often pro-Bin Laden!) fundamentalist parties in Pakistan has come to power by itself in the Northwest Frontier Province, in coalition in Baluchistan, and has 17% of the seats in parliament! Despite Pakistan's unwarranted reputation for "fundamentalism," in fact most Pakistanis are Sufis or traditionalists who dislike fundamentalism, and the latter parties seldom got more than 2-3% of seats in any election in which they ran. Until Bush came along.

In Iraq, a whole series of Muslim fundamentalist parties-- al-Da`wa, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the Sadrists, the Salafis, and now al-Qaeda, have been unleashed by Bush. They seem likely to win any election held in Iraq, since the secularists remain disorganized.

In the parliamentary elections in Afghanistan now slated for spring 2005, the Taliban or the cousins of the Taliban are likely to be a major party, benefiting from the Pushtun vote.

We could go on (a similar story of new-found fundamentalist strength could be told for Indonesia, e.g.) The real legacy of Bush to the Muslim world will likely not be secular democracy, but the provocation of Muslim publics into voting for the Muslim fundamentalists on a scale never before seen in the region.

So a fundamentalist Iraq is not just some far-fetched hypothetical. Can't wait to hear Bush explain all this to one of those widows he hasn't hugged yet.

Bush has the "war on terror" completely backward. My idea would be: First you drain the negative sentiment against us, thereby undercutting the main plank of Al Qaeda's recruitment pitch, then you sell people on democracy, and if you do it in that order, maybe you don't have to democratize countries through implosion.

Bush's idea has been to pre-emptively attempt to bomb a country in the heart of the Islamic world into democracy, without doing much of anything to counter Al Qaeda's central recruitment pitch. The result, unfortunately, is the opposite of our goal.

(p.s. no, I don't think this is Robertson's specific beef, though it may be Franklin Graham's)