Befuddled

[A] political party that articulates the destruction of Israel as part of its platform is a party with which we will not deal.

Thus President Bush yesterday morning. But most of what he said was less direct and pretty befuddled.

Again, I remind people, the elections -- democracy is -- can open up the world's eyes to reality by listening to people. And the elections -- the election process is healthy for society, in my judgment. In other words, it's -- one way to figure out how to address the needs of the people is to let them express themselves at the ballot box. And that's exactly what happened yesterday. And you'll hear a lot of people saying, well, aren't we surprised at the outcome, or this, that, or the other.

If there is corruption, I'm not surprised that people say, let's get rid of corruption. If government hadn't been responsive, I'm not the least bit surprised that people said, I want government to be responsive.

And so that was an interesting day yesterday in the -- as we're watching liberty begin to spread across the Middle East.

Is that what we're watching? I don't think so. Especially troubling is that our President doesn't seem to be getting what it is that he's seeing, but maybe that's because what he's seeing is partly the result of some serious miscalculations he's made along the way. That river in Egypt is wide and deep.

Daniel Pipes has some advice to offer. Hopefully, it's not too late.

• Slow down: Take heed that an impatience to move the Middle East to democracy is consistently backfiring by bringing our most deadly enemies to power.

• Settle in for the long run: However worthy the democratic goal, it will take decades to accomplish.

• Defeat radical Islam: Only when Muslims see that this is a route doomed to failure will they be open to alternatives.

• Appreciate stability: Stability must not be an end in itself, but its absence likely leads to anarchy and radicalization.

Shabbat Shalom.