"Democracy in the Middle East
TODAY'S COLUMNIST
By Tulin Daloglu
February 21, 2006
From Baghdad to Gaza, democratic elections are changing the Middle East. One by one, dictatorships and regimes rife with corruption are being thrown out of power. However, those coming to power with the shake-up of the status quo are far from what the United States and other democratic nations of the West expected.
It would be a major mistake to view Hamas' victory in the parliamentary elections only in the Palestinian context -- a mistake that could threaten America's national security and the strategic investment it made by toppling Saddam Hussein. Hamas' victory illustrates the trend in the Middle East of radical Islamists gaining legitimacy through democratic means. "
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