While I agree with a lot of this, one of the things that I think is frequently missed in these types of formulations is where the types of terrorist groups that are active in liberal democracies originate from. In the case of the Islamic terrorist groups that are able to operate with impunity in the West (with the UK's "Londonistan," a term coined by French counter-terrorism experts during the 1990s, being probably the most infamous example), I am not aware of a single Islamic terrorist group that has sprung up fully-formed inside a Western-style democracy. The various Islamic terrorist groups active in London are more or less extensions of their Middle Eastern counterparts and their existence and strength in the West should be seen more in the context of an attempt to export the political culture of the Middle East into Europe and the authorities apathy or hesistance towards the situation than an institutional fault of the democratic system in and of itself. The United States and Australia, to use two examples of countries that have successfully dismantled terrorist infrastructure within their own borders post-9/11, remain Western democracies but are far less hospitable to terrorism than say Norway, where Ansar al-Islam founder Mullah Krekar appears to be able to operate with more or less impunity.

The counter-example that is usually cited to all of this are the homegrown terrorist groups that have been active in Europe and North America since the era of modern terrorism began in the 1960s. All the same, if you take a look at these groups on a case-by-case basis, I think you'll find that in many cases they were either fringe organizations with little if any popular following (instead favoring small but extremely disciplined and well-organized cadres, which also fit with the Marxist ideology of many European terrorist groups) or in many cases were dependent on fairly sizeable external support and state sponsorship networks in order to wreak the damage that they did. If we are ever reduced to a point where bin Laden and his acolytes are reduced to the kind of support in the Middle East that say, enjoyed Neo-Nazi groups like the Order in the United States I'll be able to sleep a lot sounder at night. While you are always going to have cranks and meglomaniacs with delusions of grandeur who are willing to kill to achieve political ends, I would much rather be dealing with Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols whose co-conspirators and supporters number in the dozens to someone like Zarqawi whose followers are in the thousands and who is admired by Salafist radicals that very conservatively number in the hundreds of thousands.

Although this second rationale, the peaceful democracies justification, might have been one of the lesser stated goals for invading Iraq, I find it ultimately less than compelling. For one, it ignores, or only tangentially addresses, the terrorist threat that we have been encountering for the past decade-plus. Our adversaries, al-Qaeda and similar Salafist jihadist groups, are not state actors and thus the peaceful characteristics of democratic states are less crucial to the defeat or containment of the Salafists. The state actor paradigm is better suited for Cold War calculations.

Again, I'm not sure if I agree with this paradigm because while al-Qaeda is certainly not an atypical state sponsored terrorist group, I think it would be a definite mistake to downplay the role that state sponsors, de facto state sponsors, or elements with states have been as far as their development is concerned. Former CIA director Jim Woolsey, for instance, has argued that we need to stop thinking in terms of state sponsors of terrorism and start talking about terrorist sponsored states, with a particular emphasis on how terrorist groups prop up de facto governments in places like Somalia, Afghanistan, or Bangladesh. Whether or not all of these can or should be replaced with democracies is another issue altogether, but I don't think it's any exaggeration to say that one of the key doctrines of counter-insurgency, and former CIA bin Laden unit head Michael Scheuer has argued that al-Qaeda is more properly classified as a terrorist group than an insurgency, is to deprive the enemy of potential sanctuaries and allies whenever possible. If supporting democracy or democratic reforms gets us further in that direction, then by all means that's the weapon to use.

Especially because, as noted above, terrorists can operate, generate support and find motivations while living in democracies. Thus, even if we create democratic states that are less bellicose, our terrorist threat will remain ever-present.

Again, I'm not entirely certain that this is true. The radicalized European Muslim immigrants seem to be joining existing terrorist groups and networks, not forming new ones on their own, which would seem to fit with the idea that the entire phenomenon of Islamic terrorism in Europe is an external rather than internal phenomenon. As far as building up support in Western democracies is concerned, in order to so terrorists have had to at least pretend to moderate their agenda to accommodate the society they now live in. Hence, Saad al-Faqih has to at least pretend that his real concerns as far as Saudi Arabia mirror those of Westerners (or at least some Westerners) in order to continue to operate in the UK rather than going public with his real agenda, although the more intelligent observers and governments seem to be more or less able to see him for what he is, which is how he happened to get blacklisted by the UN nearly a year ago.

As to the issue of whether or not democracies start wars, I would note that Matthew White appears to have anticipated this line of argument and the subsequent debate as far back as 1998. While I by no means cite it as infallible, it does make for some interesting reading, particularly when the discussion is raised on the issue of how you define what a democracy is to begin with. This is an extremely important part of this debate and is actually a lot more complicated than it sounds, but it is also an especially thorny issue given our own history in certain areas.

One thing I will take note of is this:

As admirable as the exercise has been, the occurence of elections and referendums have vastly outpaced the establishment of the institutional checks and balances that the authors suggest are needed to restrain the urge to use war as a means of garnering and/or maintaining electoral dominance. Majoritarianism is more appreciated by certain factions than other necessary components such as dissent, minority rights and sharing of power. In present day Iraq, the temptation to use war as a unifying force may be even greater given the internal divisions that need to be broached.

With all due respect to Eric, Mansfield, and Snyder, there are a number of people within our own country who would argue that the institutional checks and balances of our own system have been insufficient to prevent the temptation of using warfare as a means of achieving electoral dominance, crushing dissent, minority rights, and power-sharing within current and past US governments, and we've had an unbroken democratic system (as variously defined) in place for more than 200 years. While I myself tend to think that such claims are twaddle, my point in bringing up that some people would make just the same arguments for our own government as Mansfield and Snyder would for emerging democracies is that if you can argue it here in a 200 year-old democracy you can argue it anywhere.

As bellicose and reckless as Saddam's regime was, there remains the possibility that subsequent incarnations of the Iraq state will do no better in terms of providing peace and stability to the region - if not by its internal implosion, then by its excursions targeting neighbors, territory and/or perceived threats. There has already been an uncomfortable level of cross-border sniping between the various factions and their perceived backers or enemies - from Iran and Syria to Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

If we're going from projections of an inevitable civil war and the subsequent implosion and Balkanization of the country to a fear of Iraqi expansion redux, methinks that we're going to be doing quite well. As it now stands, Iraq isn't in a position to defend its own borders without US assistance, let alone threaten any of its neighbors. Even once the army and security forces are up and running again in terms of defending the nation's territorial integrity, there is still the issue that Iraq lacks an existing the air force, etc.

I also think it's a definite mistake to conflate Iraqi sniping at Iran and Syria (often mirrored by similar allegations from US and UK officials) as well as Saudi Arabia with the kinds of visions of empire that Saddam seemed to favor. Iraq wanting to fight Iran or Syria (which, as noted above, they can't for the immediate future) because they believe that either nation is complicit in killing their nationals is a very different thing from seeking a war of conquest with designs of regional domination - I imagine we'd be equally pissed if Mexico or Canada was doing the same to us.

No doubt Israel is no more popular now than it had been prior to the invasion.

If Seymour Hersh and other journalists are to be believed, Israel is now actively assisting in training the peshmerga, which is now part of the new Iraqi military. I very much doubt that anyone could have imagined such an environment going on during the era of the Saddam Fedayeen. The anti-Israel groups that Saddam Hussein sponsored have all been dismantled in way or another and Iraqi government support for suicide bombing is currently no more. The Iraqis can think whatever they want to about Israel, just many people in Europe and the United States do. As long as they aren't actively sponsoring terrorism against it, I think it's fair to call the situation a net improvement.

As to the issue of Iraq fighting a conventional war with Israel at some point in the future, if we're projecting out things out far enough to the point where Iraq will have the logistical capacity to do so on the scale that Saddam did we're now knee-deep into some extremely uncertain speculation as far as what Iraq will look like by the time it could even hope to do so, let alone the rest of the Middle East.

But this thesis has broader implications as well. It should be considered by those that favor the promotion of democratic reform, such as myself, in terms of informing the ideal mixture of methods, means and priorities associated with such endeavors. Sometimes, there is a great value in allowing and encouraging gradual change from the inside-out, grassroots-up.

This would seem, at least on the surface, to be a partial reaffirmation of the Kirkpatrick Doctrine that attempted to justify US support for authoritarian governments, particularly in Latin America, on the grounds that they were going to make far easier transition to democracy than their totalitarian communist counterparts in the Soviet Bloc. I have no desire to re-fight the arguments of the Cold War on this one, but I thought I would note this.

One further point would be that while I think you can justify support for authoritarian governments while pressing for internal reforms, most Western powers usually haven't as far as the Middle East is concerned, particularly those Middle Eastern governments that are closest to us either economically or strategically. The problem that we (along with the British, French, et al.) have cared too much about the stability of various Middle Eastern governments to press for any kind of change whatsoever in the status quo is one that I think a lot of us have become more and more aware of since 9/11 and continues to be one of the major factors responsible for bin Laden's support in the Middle East - he is seen as being the only one willing to stand up and confront the region's governments and their Western allies through force of arms. Until some kind of alternate outlets are established through which political views, even totalitarian ones like Qutb or Madudi's vision of Salafism (which I am rather skeptical as far as the chances of it sweeping the region in the event it is allowed to compete politically - in those states where Salafist parties have run, they usually garner about the same percentage as far-right parties in Europe), can be expressed openly, I do foresee this support waning for the immediate future, which has direct implications for US national security.