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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: goldworldnet who wrote (692201)	7/16/2005 2:50:36 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 769668

Osama Fades As Democracy Gains By Captain Ed on War on Terror Captain's Quarters An opinion POLL in six Muslim countries shows surprising results for attitudes about Islamists and Western-style democracy. Support for Osama bin Laden has fallen to half of what it had been in previous surveys, while support for democratization and freedom has grown enormously: <<< Osama bin Laden's standing has dropped significantly in some key Muslim countries, while support for suicide bombings and other acts of violence has "declined dramatically," according to a new survey released today. In a striking finding, predominantly Muslim populations in a sampling of six North African, Middle East and Asian countries are also as alarmed as Western nations about Islamic extremism, which is now seen as a threat in their own nations too, the POLL found. ... Compared with previous surveys, the new POLL also found growing majorities or pluralities of Muslims surveyed now say democracy can work in their countries and is not just a political system for the West. Support for democracy was in the 80 percent range in Indonesia, Jordan, Lebanon and Morocco and the highest score at 43 percent in Pakistan and 48 percent in Turkey, where significant numbers were unsure. "They are not just paying lip service. They are saying they specifically want a fair judiciary, freedom of expression and more than one party to participate in elections. It wasn't just a vague concept," said Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center and director of the project. "U.S. and Western ideas about democracy have been globalized and are in the Muslim world." >>> This demonstrates that Bush's policies of attacking terrorists where they have hidden themselves and demanding the liberalization of the Arabic world has had a huge, positive impact. Despite the carping of how Iraq has created terrorists in Muslim nations, the unmasking of Islamofascism as a bloodthirsty movement perfectly happy with killing fellow Muslims by the hundreds to make its point has destroyed its credibility. In contrast, the success of the Iraqi elections, followed by the popular democratic uprising against Syria in Lebanon and the demand for free election in Egypt, has shown Arabs and Muslims that democracy and pluralism works. Democratization brings hope and a measure of control over one's life, two qualities that have long been absent from the tyrannies and kleptocracies of the Middle East. Until Iraq and Afghanistan showed it could work for Arabs as well as Europeans, the subjects of these autocracies had neither nor any glimmer of possibility of achieving them. Now that they see their cousins able to govern themselves through free elections and hold their leaders accountable for their actions, they understand the futility of suicide attacks and terrorism. Just like anyone else, they will choose freedom and hope over oppression and death. This is how we will win the war on Islamofascist terror -- not by winning big battles, although that necessarily has to happen to set the stage for these successes. We will win the war by discrediting the enemy among their own people, who will one day utterly reject their nihilistic ideologies. That day, apparently, is almost here. captainsquartersblog.com washingtonpost.com