Again we are stuck on the horns of that old "Our Thug" dilemma.

I am actually hearing from a lot of liberals how we screwed up by overthrowing Saddam when he was restraining the Islamists in Iraq. We all saw the results of letting the Shah of Iran go down the toilet.

It's no secret that Turkey and Egypt have not exactly using the democratic process to suppress radical Islam in their own nations.

We know that the Soviets during the Cold War, and the Islamists now, have no problems pumping their own people into countries all over the world. We have a long bipartisan history of supporting thugocracies who opposed Soviet-run communist movements in their countries.

We also know that while backing non-democratic regimes that oppose larger enemies often works, that this comes with a lot of baggage and long-term crap that we end up having to deal with.

I wish I had an easy answer for this.

In the specific case of Uzbekistan, the question is what level of support, if any, is needed to restrain the spread of radical Islam, which has a human rights record at least as bad, and unlike the thug who runs Uzbekistan, has ambitions far beyond that country's borders?

I wish I had an easy answer for that, too.

Iraq is a lab experiment. Can radical Islamism be kept in check through the parliamentary process without a tyrant doing it? We'll know eventually.