David Rieff in the NY Times

But the conflict with jihadism is a contest between modernity and antimodernity, and, as we are discovering to our cost, obscurantism has a far larger constituency and a far more powerful hold on the popular imagination, certainly in the Islamic world, than most people imagined a generation ago. Jihadists have the advantage of speaking to a Muslim population that already shares many of their beliefs, whereas communists had to indoctrinate many of their constituents from scratch. Add to this the fact that, in countries like Egypt, a version of modernity has largely failed to provide ordinary people with a decent life, and the appeal of the fundamentalists is neither so difficult to explain nor so irrational as it sometimes appears.

Restating America's case more eloquently would certainly be a good thing. But the assumption that everyone in the world will gravitate toward a variation on American democracy if given half a chance is more likely based on wishful thinking (and, doubtless, good intentions) than on a sound and sober reading of history. In her Senate testimony, Karen Hughes said that ''people will choose freedom over tyranny and tolerance over extremism every time.'' Would that it were true. Of course people crave freedom, but Karen Hughes's idea of it and the Ayatollah al-Sistani's idea of it are very different. As for people unfailingly choosing tolerance, the historical perspective suggests that this has been the exception rather than the rule. An American public diplomacy that convinces itself otherwise has little chance of success, no matter how influential the person at its helm and how many resources she has at her disposal.