Tom Friedman's Column, The Hidden Victims discusses how the trouble in the West Bank has hurt the moderate voices in the Middle East. This is largely because these countries have used Palestine as a diversion to deflect criticism of their own regimes.

It's easy to denounce oppressive governments like Mubarek's or the Saudis, but I daresay that the Iranians were better off under the "oppressive" Shah. The Iraqis and Syrians have probably never had it worse than now.

I think a good argument can be made that authoritarian regimes are the only way to bring the Arab world into modernity, because Islamic radicals like Ayatollah Khomeini are seldom motivated by ideas like human rights and modernization. Does anyone think that Pakistan under fundamentalist Islamic rule would have been as helpful to the U.S. in Afghanistan as it has been under Musharraf? The only chance for these countries to improve the lot of their people is through enlightened autocrats with the power to keep the mullahs and the ayatollahs and taliban from preventing it.