From Reuel Marc Gerecht’s “Who’s Afraid of Abu Ghraib,” comes this insightful bit:

A very odd, very American notion about foreign affairs has now become gospel in certain quarters in Washington: Bin Ladenism will end and democracy spread throughout the Muslim Middle East only when a critical mass of Muslims like, respect, and trust us. Democracy cannot exist in the Muslim mind on its own merits but is judged overwhelmingly by the actions and intrinsic goodness of the United States. Or, as Professor [Shibley] Telhami [the Anwar Sadat professor for peace and development at the University of Maryland] put it, “When you don’t trust the messenger, you don’t trust the message, even if it’s a good one.” Muslims, especially Arab Muslims to whom Bush administration officials feel especially obliged to apologize for Abu Ghraib, have become so America-centric, according to this view, that they cannot admire democracy even though democracy as it is practiced in much of Western Europe has produced political elites that are pro-Arab, pro-Palestinian, and anti-Zionist. But Muslims’ appreciation of democracy cannot be that nuanced. Or, to put it another way, Muslims aren’t rational, historical actors. Their political predilections–unlike those of Americans or Europeans or Japanese–aren’t shaped primarily by the societies in which they live, but by foreigners whom they rarely see except on TV […]

[…] consider a contemporary parallel. In March 2004, the new Supreme Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood, the oldest and most influential fundamentalist organization in the world, allied his followers to a plan for gradual but substantive constitutional and political reform in Egypt. Egyptian liberals, like Saad Eddin Ibrahim, also back the effort, as do a fairly wide array of individuals and organizations, many of which, like the Muslim Brotherhood, you would never describe as “pro-American.” Does anybody really believe that these people, especially the followers of the Muslim Brotherhood, will find Egyptian president-for-life Hosni Mubarak’s case against democracy more persuasive because some American soldiers and intelligence officials in Baghdad thought forced onanism was an effective aid to interrogation? Democracy and anti-Americanism can happily and healthily coexist. What’s true in Latin America is true in the Middle East. Muslims are not children.

…And yet that’s how many pundits (and academics, and diplomats, and politicians) here in the US choose to characterize them, as pouty fractious savages whose infamous “street” will rise and fall with our every action — a people whose hatred of the Great Satan is so intense that it blinds them to any consideration of their own best interests. They are but temper tantrums wrapped in silk robes and tucked into sandals.

Is such true of the average Iraqi? I can’t say for sure. But I suspect not. Call me an optimist. Or maybe a humanist, I dunno.

update: More.