Imposing democracy from outside without taking cultural matrix of the region into consideration will be like seeding in the desert. It will need understanding, commitment, and a lot of encouragement. A compromise is however possible, with happy blending of old and new ideas with progressive doses of attainable sociopolitical goals. Postwar Japan and Germany needed more than a decade to flourish. Democracy and human rights -- hardly known in the Muslim Belt, a quarter century of nursery care, hopefully, will not be an ambitious guess. It needs a mega strategy in terms of time and patience and a Marshal Plan of resource mobilisation to grease it down the culture. But one must be careful; Muslim mind is not exhausted in a world war nor has the guilt of defeat on its shoulder. UN involvement will encourage necessary compromises to mellow down social friction and bloodshed.

An easy victory against Saddam has become a quagmire for President Bush. A series of mistakes have turned occupied Iraq into a battlefield. Worse still, people are caught in the eye of that storm, suffering and behaving more on emotion than logic. Arabs are in disarray. Palestinians, under occupation and in refugee camps, are trying to gain strength from religion. But they are not known as religious fanatics. The battle is not among the Muslims, Christians, or Jews -- the descendents of Abraham. It's a battle for land in which Islam is the unwanted victim.

The shock of 9/11 was too devastating for the only superpower to heal without revenge. It was another Pearl Harbour like disaster. War was chosen as the only option by President Bush to pacify angry Americans. But then, war has its own price. Precipitated entry into Afghanistan led him to take another diversionary move to occupy Iraq when yearlong effort to get Bin Laden "alive or dead" remained a frustrating mirage. The real concern was how long the Americans would rally behind the President to get the elusive Bin Laden?

In the US, President Bush singled out nationals of most of the Muslim countries for INS registration while offering a hand of friendship to over 14 million illegals. Many were deported or opted for it, others haunted by endless litigations. With no connection to Al-Qaeda, poor Bangladeshis in the US are the innocent victims. Meanwhile, the flow of students and visitors who could work as a bridge of understanding between the US and Muslim countries has almost dried up. The credibility of the President is severely damaged among the agitated Muslims due to harsh treatment. Even the staunchly loyal admirers of American values are silenced by these actions and confused by the lack of direction.

Humiliate them? Annihilate them? Nobody seems to know, how the US wants to deal with 1.2 billion Muslims.

The US has to go for constructive engagement with nearly a fifth of mankind in spite of Bin Laden. People in the so-called Muslim Belt and elsewhere are still lurching in the gray area of medieval age. They deserve a sense of direction, encouragement, and patient waiting to crawl out. Lashing can deepen the wound, not heal. Harsh treatment is pushing them to Ladenism. With serious erosion of faith in Anglo-American wisdom, Muslims feel humiliated and disgraced. Before anything can be tried or hoped for, Palestinians must have a state. How long they can live under occupation or in the refugee camps? Born under humiliation and subjugation, dying has become the only honourable option for young Palestinians.

The vision that President Bush has outlined for the Middle East cannot be achieved in the lifetime of his presidency even if he is reelected for another four years. The climate, history and nomadic nature of the region, hammered into the blood and marrow of the sociopolitical system, can neither be easily uprooted by decrees nor by guns. Roadmap must include democratisation of the Middle East with secured borders for all nations either in existence or in exile. Endorsement of killings and suppression of Palestinians on the occupied land by the Bush administration has brought his roadmap to a grinding halt.

Dr. Martin Luther King had a dream on the racial integration of America. Dr. King was cut short by ultra-racist, but his dream could not be denied nor shot to death. He lives in every American heart today. America and their President should remain pledge bound for independent Palestine and democracy, even when it is difficult to trust his words entirely. The British broke their promise given under the Balfour Declaration in 1914.

But the Jews never gave up nor lost hope till they had their "promised land" one more world war later. I would like to salute one Major Remy Kaplan of the Israel Army for refusing to fight against the Palestinians on moral grounds. It is possible to disagree only in democracy. In spite of perpetual war with the Arabs, Israel is the only democracy in that region with a kind of social progress comparable with the West.

Since the fall of the Ottomans in the First World War, Muslims had an overdose of religion in every failed attempt to regain their lost glory. But people were never glorified under dynastic monarchies. Western civilization did not take off until they had wrestled their rights from religious icons and absolute monarchs through civil wars and blood baths. Long overdue democracy is the bottom line of the Muslim Belt if peace and prosperity with dignity is the goal. Fallen behind by centuries, Muslims must strive for a Renaissance today and start with a minimum agenda of democracy, education, and emancipation of women. Let people get free with lesser pain than the Europeans did centuries ago. If only raison d'être can have a foothold, much of the tension and humiliation will soon evaporate.

After all, emotion cannot be an alternative to common sense.