LESSON FROM THE PROFESSOR: InstaPundit has the following observation:
The big danger in the next few months isn't being too violent, and inflaming the "Arab street" with a desire for revenge. It's not being violent enough, and inflaming the "Arab street" with the belief that victory is possible.
I think one measure of success on the war on terrorism will be if, by the next State of the Union address, there are new, pro-Western governments in both Iran and Iraq. I think it's entirely possible (one by internal revolution, which we should be encouraging, and one by invasion). Those who protest that those two countries have not been definitively linked to 9/11 are usually the same ones who say, in their next breath, that only attacking the "conditions which lead" to terrorism(usually meaning Israel) will succeed. They have it wrong, as usual: The disappearance of the undisputed leader of Islamic fundamentalism (Shi'ite division) and the regime which has defied the U.S. most conspicuously for the longest, and the rise of pro-Western governments in their stead, will do more to show the bankruptcy of the Islamo-facist approach than any measure of diplomatic niceties.
Thomas Friedman has often written about the need for Arab societies to open up and reconstitute themselves. The external shock to the region from regime changes in Iran and Iraq should help matters.