WP editorial (Feb. 4, 2006) concludes "Democratization in the Middle East will inevitably mean that Islamists and others with anti-Western agendas will have the chance to compete for power -- and occasionally to govern. If so they will be forced to choose, as Hamas now will, between ideology and pragmatic success, and suffer democracy's consequences if they fail. To oppose that development is to invest in an untenable status quo and to raise the chances that the Islamists -- who are a force the Middle East will live with for decades to come -- will assume power and rule not by democracy but by violence."