The Race

Pakistan’s military dictator Pervez Musharraf pardoned Abdel Qadeer Khan for selling nuclear weapons secrets to North Korea, Libya, and Iran. The Beeb says there is tremendous public opposition to putting this guy on trial. In Pakistan he is a hero.
If Saddam Hussein still lorded it over Iraq, does anyone think Mr. Khan would have balked at helping him, too?
The Terror War is a race. On the one side we have a veritable axis of hard-line dictatorships trafficking in anti-Western terrorism and genocide weapons. On the other we have the guilt-ridden self-doubting West that slowly and in fits tries to civilize and democratize the unfree corners of the world.
The nuclear genie is out of its bottle. It cannot be put back in. Francis Fukuyama convincingly argues that the expansion of democracy is inevitable, but not on any particular schedule.
Which will spread the farthest and fastest? Liberalism or terror? Democracy or nuclear-armed jihadist regimes?
No one knows. Our intelligence agencies are broken and discredited. And most in the West want to think of sunnier things.