the Arab world is in a revolutionary situation, one extremely unfavorable to US interests (and Israeli interests, for that matter). An invasion of Iraq only tips the balance further into the revolution.
yes and no. a more extended and scholarly treatment of the "revolution" issue will be appearing in a major new political science journal in a few months, which I've seen and which develops, with particular reference to the case of Islamism in Egypt, many of the points Margalit touches on here. (I'll try to post it when it appears.)
There is indeed a revolutionary situation in the Arab world, it argues, but the key factor in creating it is not American policies but rather the pathetic performance of current Arab states in meeting their citizens' various needs. With outside support (from the US and elsewhere) the states have been able to maintain their power to repress, but don't really do anything else. The result is a kind of weird stalemate in which a social revolution is gradually spreading from below (through Islamist capture of civil society institutions), but without a political revolution from above (e.g., through Islamist capture of governments).
I find the analysis persuasive, but I'm not really sure how the Iraq situation plays into it, since the major challenge seems to be how improve the performance of existing Arab regimes, which nobody seems to know how to do. If the US could somehow create a model of reasonably decent, responsible, and representative governance in a post-Saddam Iraq (a huge if, of course), I suppose it might indeed help nudge some of the existing states toward some positive reforms, which might help improve their standing. But of course the sense of further Arab victimization and powerlessness that an invasion would represent might also spur those regimes' domestic oppositions, perhaps even (although I doubt it) past the point beyond which the governments could maintain control. As Lindy say, TWT...
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