Muravchik's Saudi sojourn

Here's a link to an interesting piece by Joshua Muravchik on a trip he just took to Saudi Arabia to give some lectures. Josh, of course, is at the American Enterprise Institute and a (generally) neocon advocate of promoting democracy worldwide. (I don't think that's such a terrible aspiration, but I would focus on freedom and civil societies rather than democracy per se, and would do it by example rather than through force.)

Anyway, he's not a bad reporter -- and he was one of the few neocons I interviewed prior to the Iraq invasion who acknowledged that establishing a working democracy in Iraq would be no easy task, perhaps because he's been genuinely interested in promoting democracy for at least 20 years and has actually studied a bit what works and what doesn't. Anyway, no earthshattering revelations here, but good information and some fascinating local color.