Looking at the big picture of history, how many races and cultures DID have a major history of democracy? Europeans, Asians, Africans, anyone? While there were some places democracies popped up--and even then they weren't exactly what we would call "individual rights" democracies in many cases--almost everyone lived under some form of centralized, immensely powerful, and often abusive authority.

In this particular window of history we live in now, the Arabs are in a bad spot. A few centuries ago, Europe didn't look all that hot either.

Who would have thought Japan would end up a democracy, even in the lifetimes of some people alive today? Count up all the democracies right now. How many of them were democracies in 1900? 1950? Hell, 1980?

Looking at things this way, why NOT a bunch of Arab democracies? Maybe the Muslim religion is going through a nasty extremist patch right now, and that needs to be confronted, but Christianity went through a few really nasty patches itself. They got over it. So will the Muslims.