The Muhammad cartoon flap

The cartoon flap is pretty scarry ... I think for a long time, Western governments have been tolerating and even partnering with really shaky, corrupted leaders from the Middle East, who cared not a whit about their people. By building a couple of schools here, a couple of dispensaries there, it didn't take much for the faction of Muslim fanatics to show the poor people in these parts of the world a semblance of equity and justice. Unfortunately, the road from schools and dispensaries and food-for-the-poor to religious intolerance and jihad was just a hair's breadth away. The ironic thing is, these fanatic values are now being institutionalized, aided by the very same democracy framework, proned by Bush as the cure all to the region's political ills (I'm thinking of the Hamas). The story of the cartoon shows how much of a gap there is in the mutual undestanding/appreciation between the Western world and the Middle East. Unless there's some way to bridge this gap (and why not through economic development rather than through this silly and much over-used notion of democracy imposed from without) we're heading toward WW3 slowly but surely. And I just really hope I don't live to see that day !