<P> When asked about his thoughts regarding the current state of democracy in the region he said: </P> <P> People's memories...have become tuned or conditioned to thinking that the problems in the Middle East must be a chronic condition, not that they are only 30 years old, and not realizing that the reason for the current state of the Middle East was first, the Arab - Israeli conflict, and two, the Cold War . </P> <P> The Cold War made the United States and other western democracies look the other way when it came to political oppression and allowed them to deal with tyrants and dictators . </P> <P> The Middle East Forum, a think tank based in Philadelphia, recently published their table for measurement of democracy within Middle Eastern states . Their contention is that little has changed, post-September 11, 2001, and if anything the "War on Terror" has enabled many regimes to stifle democratic progress . The results showed very little progress from 1999 - 2005 . The report even states that this pattern may be counter-productive to US interests, with Islamism being the only viable opposition to regimes in many Middle Eastern countries . As an additional measure of US attitudes towards the issue of Middle Eastern democratization, on 14 December 2006, the US Secretary of state Condoleezza Rice stated that democracy in the Middle East was "non-negotiable ." </P>

Political regimes and governance in the middle east