NYTimes: Bush Urges All Autocrats to Yield Now to Democracy

"President Bush called on Muslim nations on Tuesday to embrace democracy and warned Middle East autocrats, including those who are American allies, that they "must recognize the direction of events of the day."
Speaking at the end of a five-day trip to Europe and Turkey, Mr. Bush acknowledged that Western nations have helped nourish extremism by supporting repressive Middle Eastern leaders for the sake of regional stability.
"But it did not serve the people of the Middle East to betray their hope of freedom," he said, "and it has not made Western nations more secure to ignore the cycle of dictatorship and extremism.". . .
In his address, delivered at Galatasaray University, President Bush returned to a familiar theme — the need to confront terrorism by forcefully encouraging Muslim nations to modernize.
He sought to link the invasion of Iraq to a strategy aimed at promoting democracy in what he called the "broader Middle East," an area that aides said might stretch from North Africa to the Indian subcontinent.
While he offered few specific prescriptions, he repeated to his audience of Turkish journalists and business leaders his assertion that removing Saddam Hussein from power set the stage for a democratic transformation in Iraq that would inspire reformers in other countries.
"Any nation that compromises with violent extremists only emboldens them and invites future violence," Mr. Bush said. "Suppressing dissent only increases radicalism."
He cited Iraq and Afghanistan as countries where democracy was taking hold with NATO's help. But the summit meeting, which focused on aid for the two nations, did not in the end endorse his view of an expansive nation-building role for the alliance in either country."