When faced with the option of removing the old regime, Moussa, as the mouthpiece for the status quo in the Middle East, stopped at almost nothing to prevent the toppling of Saddam. He tried to form a united front of Arab states to defend Saddam. He famously declared that a war to topple the Baathists would "open the gates of hell" unleashing mass violence in the "Arab street," refugee crises, hordes of new Osama bin Ladens bent on revenge, cats living with dogs, etc. Very little of that has happened - so far.
There's a silver lining to all of this lying and dishonesty. When Arab leaders refer to Saddam Hussein or Yasser Arafat or Hosni Mubarak as "democratically elected" they may be lying, but they are also conceding a huge argument in the West's favor. They are admitting that the only source of political authority left - outside religion - is democratic authority, broadly defined.
The Iranians (who aren't Arabs) can claim that their government derives its legitimacy from Islam, though the millions of Iranians clamoring for democratic reforms don't seem to care. But pretty much everyone else in the region and the world has made the rhetorical admission that democracy is the only game in town.
The challenge for Americans, the media, and the Bush administration is to acknowledge what the average Arab citizen already knows: All of this democratic rhetoric is B.S.
This is harder than it sounds. Too many journalists, anti-American leftists and U.N. apparatchiks are willing to take Arab and Third World rhetoric at face value. Remember how many people pretended to believe the 100 percent pro-Saddam "election" results?
We don't need lessons from the Amr Moussas of the world on how to set up democratic regimes. We've done it in Japan, Germany and Italy, to name three, and they still have a batting average of zero. We may be doing it wrong, but asking Egypt or Saudi Arabia how to do it right is like asking Sweden how to privatize health care.