President Clinton gave a terrific speech at the U.S. - Islamic World Forum in Doha, Qatar, which is now available in PDF. I've mirrored the transcript on the UNMEDIA group.
It's lengthy but it's profound, and does not shy away from placing specific responsibilities on the Islamic nations. There is a lot here to think about.
It's worth noting that the worldview expressed by Clinton is distinctly neo-wilsonian, which is as I've noted before similar to neoconservatism in that it seeks to spread democracy throughout the world, but differs in that it recognizes other nations's self interests and tries to guide them to be parallel to ours, on the basis of shared principles, rather than force them to adopt our self-interest explicitly. The latter ishow we are proceeding in Iraq, and sometimes runs counter to the actual goal of democracy itself, which is why we have a situation where an Islamic cleric is calling for direct elections and the occupying force seeking to empower an unelected group.
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