I’m not sure about the motivations of the neocons. Some of them are actually so idealistic they’ve become stupid and actually believe their own propaganda about taking democracy to the world, etc. Others are willing to talk that game but really have their eyes on the oil situation, and often also on the security of Israel, but widening democracy be damned. I think Wolfowitz is in the idealistic-to-the-point-of-stupidity camp, while Richard Perle is clearly a Prince of Darkness.

It’s kind of like the split between East-Coast and West-Coast Straussians, with the East Coasters (as I understand it) holding that the Master spoke the same esoteric code that he found in other philosophers, and that democracy is actually just a nice illusion for the masses, while the West Coasters believe he usually meant what he said and that some kind of democracy (although a nastily conservative kind) is actually a good thing. But maybe the West Coasters are fooling us all and actually don’t like democracy? Maybe they’re all planning to install Dick Cheney on a throne of blood and sing his praises for a thousand years?

… anyway, I like your analysis of liberal political philosophy at play on the global stage, and how we, liberals of a very old order, ought not focus solely on the crisis of the moment but rather keep one eye, at least, on the historical context(s) from which the West/Islamic world’s confrontations stem. And second, I like your noting that realpolitikal concerns (i.e. oil, and unbridaled access there to) are the fundamental motivations of the US neocons, whatever floss they’re floating at given moment. Both of these facets of the current conflicts are clearly front-and-center in the conscience of the Islamic world, while the West–er, at least the US–wants to pretend the crusades never happened and democracy and freedom (buzzwords for philosophical liberalism) were born ex nihilo in 1776. The Islamic world may be on the wrong side, at least substantially, of these old and subtle cultural disagreements, but at least your average Abbas on the streets is cognizant of the debates. Most of us in the West–liberals, neocons, whatever–seem a) entirely ignorant of the fundamental questions at play, or b) ambivalent toward their significance, or c) willfully creating facile motivations with which to sweep the masses into emotional alarm and complicity, while disguising their true agendas.