I don't believe that most people in the Middle East really want to blow themselves up and believe in this ideology any more than most Russians actually wanted to believe in international communism. There are always extremists who are going to do that. There are always ideologues who are going to believe and they are always going to recruit from a pool of disaffected people. So you both have to lessen the pool of disaffected people, give them alternatives, and people choose other paths. I just don't see a society yet where that hasn't been the case.

But Condi is putting the cart before the horse. The Soviet State didn't crumble because we tried to create a new Soviet state in the same location, with the same cast of characters, expecting to change their spots. It crumbled because we forced it to intensify its internal contradictions, tempting it into an accelerated arms race and continually showing its people the contrast between their lives and the ones they could have in a freer society.

That is the way to destroy jihadism, by not allowing it to expand its empire, not allowing it any military victories, starving it of legitimacy and financial support, until its internal contradictions force it to collapse, while at the same time demonstrating an alternative.

Therefore the solution is the opposite of what Condi proposes. The Palestinians must not be given any rewards for choosing jihadism. They must not be given even more money for their corrupt murderous leaders to buy arms with and sock away in Swiss bank accounts. The Palestinian state must not be allowed to happen unless it is unambiguously on record in Arabic and Hebrew and English that it will co-exist with Israel, and unambiguously repudiate terrorism and the groups which promote and conduct it. As long as the "70% of Palestinians who just want a normal life" continue to vote for and support the terrorists, they are complicit, and what they "really" want is moot. If they are truly 70%, they should have been able to make it happen by now. If they didn't, simply pronouncing a "state" is not going to empower them.

Twenty years after the collapse of the Soviet system, Russia is still struggling to transition from a command and control economy, and is not succeeding. Does it matter whether most Russians believe in international communism? Does it matter whether 70% of Palestinians are educated and just want a normal life?

After much trial and error, reliable rules of thumb have emerged for successful nation-building. They weren't followed in Russia or the Palestinian territories. They have been partially followed in Iraq. These programs for building civic institutions have to become ingrained enough to withstand extremists and opportunists trying to derail them, before a state is formalized. The state is the result of a widespread demonstrated commitment to civil society, not the starting point.

Unfortunately, the tragedy of the Palestinians is that no one is able or willing to be politically incorrect enough to get them from there to here. Given the violent chaotic nature of that society, occupation is the only way to enforce the necessary conditions for these civic institutions to take root. Democracy-building measures have been tried and they are immediately undermined by the Iran-funded terrorists and local strongmen. Hell, that's happening in Iraq even as we are occupying it, precisely because we are being too politically correct.

I feel for the 70% of Palestinians who just want to raise their children and work their jobs in a peaceful nation. I do believe their number is 70%. It doesn't take very many bad actors to undermine a polity. But I also believe the civil 70% isn't trying very hard, and are making excuses for going along with the terrorists. Even if they were putting themselves on the line, their failure might be overdetermined, given the politics of the whole region. The Palestinians are the tip of the jihadi spear, and the entire Arab world has a stake in not allowing them to be anything else.

So even occupation of the territories for the express purpose of painstaking nation-building would face the same challenges as Iraq (albeit with no sparsely populated remote provinces to worry about and a western democracy along most of the border). What the normal peace-loving 70% want is irrelevant if the necessary conditions for achieving it don't exist.

Of course Condi can't say that somebody (i.e. the US) needs to occupy Gaza and the West Bank and perform nation-building activities for some years before a peaceloving state can be pronounced. (Not to mention that we don't have the resources to do that and no one in the region would let us, not to mention the stink in the UN and other halls of power and influence.) But as Thomas quotes at the beginning of the interview:

You're all over the conservative Jewish blogs for remarks you made recently on the Palestinian state, your commitment to it, living side by side with Israel, and that's been the policy of the Administration since day one.

That is the Bush Administration position, and Bush has been pretty clear that democracy (shorthand for civil society) is a precondition for this state. But in this interview Condi doesn't expound on the necessary conditions as I have here (and she knows them, and has expounded on them in the past with regard to Iraq). She starts to make a case for good intentions rather than a case for nation-building, and the Administration's position is that good intentions aren't enough. At least I hope that is still the Administration's position.