Know When to Hold’ Em …

David Ignatius discusses the mixed feelings toward the war of a friend in Saudi Arabia:

Change is coming in the Arab world, inexorably. It’s visible in the wide-open coverage of the war by Arab television stations, in the increasingly free debate in once-closed societies such as Saudi Arabia and in the democratic reform of the Palestinian Authority.

The only thing that could reverse this process of change would be an American effort to impose it, at the point of a gun, beyond Iraq. That kind of M1-tank diplomacy would reinforce the bad trends in the Arab world and reverse the good ones.

Sunday brought news of the apparent death of Gen. Ali Hassan Majeed, the Iraqi commander who viciously suppressed the Shiite revolt in 1991. I can only imagine the joy those young Iraqi boys in the south are feeling as they learn that this hated and feared man is dead. I hope my Saudi friend can imagine it, too. [Washington Post]

I think his perspective and tone are about right on this – let’s get Iraq straightened out and not be quick to march on.