I understand your hesitation. I don't think Bush is naive, or at any rate any more naive than the rest of us; I, personally, have changed my opinions considerably in the last few years, partly because I have read more and partly because I have observed more. I am sure Bush and all his advisors have done likewise, and I really wonder if we knew then what we knew now if our objective wouldn't have been different. In other words, not nation building, but suppression of a threat, starting with Iraq and sweeping on to Iran and Syria. What would we have done then? I don't know, but perhaps it would have been easier if we had destroyed them first, and then rebuilt according to our plans, rather than holding back and then hoping that they would come and reason together.
I honestly don't think there is a way for an Islamic society to build a democracy; Bush keeps saying it won't be like our democracy, and that's not something that bothers me - but the problem is that it will probably end up, very soon, being simply another Islamic state where democracy simply means that people get to vote for one Islamic hothead or another, and the whole country is governed by sharia. Why should we be installing sharia anywhere? Maybe these people voted for it, but it's like voting for a dictator: your last free vote is the one that votes him in. Yet we're still going to support it?
Frankly, I don't know how it should end. I was very hopeful a couple of years ago, but the Muslims are only getting nuttier and revealing their hatred more clearly by the moment. Iran is more of a threat than it was a couple of years ago - and, incidentally, is tied to much of the guerrilla activity in Iraq - and the West is so disunited and demoralized by the left and by the actions of its own Muslim population that I feel we are actually weaker than we were at the beginning of the Iraq war.
I don't want to be as pessimistic as Fitzgerald, but things are certainly not looking positive now - and I am sure that Bush himself (judging by the fact that he actually mentioned Islamic extremism in the SOTU) is also rethinking things. That's all we can do, after all. Everybody has 20-20 hindsight.
As always, an articulate and incisive analysis.