"THERE IS A TIME BOMB TICKING IN THE MIDDLE EAST", writes Victor Davis Hanson, but this time, "it is in Cairo and Damascus and Riyadh":

A successful consensual government in Baghdad will serve as a glimpse of what life can be like amid the economic and political stagnation of the surrounding Arab world. More importantly, it will confront radical Islam with a competing ideology that possesses a far more revolutionary message than the Islamists' tired old culture of death that ruined Afghanistan and Iran, wrecked the economy of the West Bank, tore apart Algeria, ended the tourist industry of Egypt, brought international scorn on Saudi Arabia and Indonesia, turned the president of Malaysia into an international laughingstock, nearly made Pakistan an outlaw regime — and led to the reckoning after 9/11. Holdover Soviet-style Baathism didn't work; Islamic fascism was a failure; tribal dictatorship and monarchies are no better; Pan-Arabism was a cruel joke. The Arab world is running out of alternatives to democratic governments and free markets.

A free Iraq will place a terrible dilemma on the governments and elites of these closed Arab societies who must explain to their own poor and oppressed how satellite pictures of voting Iraqis, Internet cafes, and raucous debates on television are really fabricated images concocted by the American-Zionist international consortium. There is a time bomb ticking in the Middle East, but it is in Cairo and Damascus and Riyadh, where corrupt elites can only pray that things don't calm down in Baghdad and thereby prompt al Jazeera to switch from tailing dead-end Baathists to interviewing Iraqi parliamentarians.

UPDATE: Afghanistan will compete in a beauty contest (including the swimsuit competition) for the first time in more than 30 years, two years after the fall of the Taliban regime. James Taranto has details--and photos.

I wonder how that's playing in Cairo and Damascus and Riyadh?

UPDATE (10/26): Glenn Reynolds ran a photo of Afghanistan's contestant, and got a few surprisingly negative comments.