The Bush administration's initiative on Middle East democracy has been widely portrayed as ending with a whimper at a trio of international summits this month. Opposition from France and other European skeptics forced a watering down of the democracy initiatives by the Group of Eight and NATO; several big Arab governments, including Egypt and Saudi Arabia, spurned what was left. In Washington, foreign policy "realism" is back in fashion, thanks to the trouble in Iraq: Both the Democrats around John F. Kerry and a number of powerful Republicans are saying Bush's vision of spreading democracy is a naive and even dangerous illusion.
All true -- but there's more to the story. Though Bush's mismanagement of Iraq has put his democracy advocates on the defensive, there nevertheless now exists the beginning of a broad pro-reform coalition in and outside the region. It includes a handful of people in Arab governments, but many more outside, in rapidly growing civic and human rights movements. There are E
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