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Vin Weber is a former congressman (1980-92, Minnesota's 6th district), now a Washington lobbyist and Republican insider considered close to the White House. He was among those who signed a 1998 letter, organized by the neoconservative Project for the New American Century, http://www.newamericancentury.org/ urging President Clinton to overthrow Saddam Hussein. He is currently chairman of the board of the National Endowment for Democracy, a bipartisan, government-funded entity that seeks to spread democracy internationally. He also co-chaired, with former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, a Council on Foreign Relation task force that published a June 2005 report titled: "In Support of Arab Democracy: Why and How."

Why the spread of democracy in the Middle East is in the U.S. interest

Some say it's not. Until recently, the prevailing view of the U.S. government was that we could not trust the people of the Arab world to elect a government that would protect our interests in the region. That has led us to support royal families, shahs and an assortment of dictators.

In the short run there's still no guarantee, in Iraq or across the Arab world, that elections will produce governments that will agree with the United States on matters important to us.

We do believe, and I would argue that history makes it clear, that over the long term, democratic governments are more likely to adopt a peaceful approach to the outside world, and that democracy brings a diminution of violence within those countries because it affords people a non-violent way to seek change.

And for those who doubt that it is in America's interest, I ask them, intending this in a non-cynical and non-flippant way, what are the alternatives?

Appointing non-democratic governments of various stripes did not keep the lid on in that region. It has led to the boiling and roiling that's going on now.

It helped create a region that brought us as close as we ever got to World War III. [On follow-up, Weber said this was a reference to the potential for a U.S.-Soviet conflict during the Arab-Israeli war of 1973.]

Now it is the region of the world that is generating more terrorists, and more lethal terrorists, than any other.

I look at that region and I see every reason to believe that, if nothing changes, things will only get worse.

The burden of history

In trying to convince people in the Middle East that we really care about democracy, we have to overcome a wall of skepticism and suspicion. Our opponents in the global war on terrorism will equate democracy with a foreign religion – Christianity – and with Western influence in general and U.S. influence in particular.

Part of that is a product of our own past conduct. Previous U.S. administrations have supported authoritarian governments in many parts of the world. The United States helped overthrow democracies in some cases, although most of those were during the Cold War when the whole world was at stake. And in many cases we favored democracy where it seemed likely to produce a pro-American government and opposed it when it didn't.

To some degree, we are also inheriting the sins of other Western powers. The whole West has a history of treating this region with sort of a utilitarian disregard of our own ideals. Go back a generation; it was the French and the British doing that in the Middle East. That's a fact.

But that can't become an excuse to say we can't change now. The only way to change that perception is an ongoing commitment to this process. That global mistrust of our commitment to democracy cannot be overcome within the term of this administration.

One of the valuable things about collaborating with Secretary Albright on the task force is that it makes the final report bipartisan. No foreign policy initiative as sweeping as the President's commitment to democratization can succeed beyond the term of the President unless it has a bi-partisan basis. I'm concerned that some Democrats dislike President Bush so much that they can't support anything he is doing.

How Iraq fits in

The potential impact of establishing democracy in an Arab Muslim country is huge.