The Lewis Doctrine

This important article by Andrew Bostom notes a 2004 op-ed in the Wall Street Journal which reported the crucial detail -- largely ignored by nearly everyone -- that the main impetus and vision of the Bush Cheney policy vis-à-vis the problem of Islam was to try to solve the problem of obviously metastasizing terrorism consequent upon 911 with a strategy of democratizing Muslims (which, perforce, of course, implies the disastrously neo-Wilsonian view that Muslims are capable of becoming "democratic").  

One critical part of that op-ed quoted by Bostom:

Call it the Lewis Doctrine. Though never debated in Congress or sanctified by presidential decree, Mr. Lewis’s diagnosis of the Muslim world’s malaise, and his call for a U.S. military invasion to seed democracy in the Mideast… As mentor and informal adviser to some top U.S. officials, Mr. Lewis has helped coax the White House to shed decades of thinking about Arab regimes and the use of military power. Gone is the notion that U.S. policy in the oil-rich region should promote stability above all, even if it means taking tyrants as friends. Also gone is the corollary notion that fostering democratic values in these lands risks destabilizing them. Instead, the Lewis Doctrine says fostering Mideast democracy is not only wise but imperative.