Method to the Madness - Maybe

Christopher Deliso wonders aloud at the fact that the neocons, with their fetishism for "democracy," have brought such groups as Hamas to power.

Or two, they planned [the election of extremist parties] all along, aware that more "democracy" in the Middle East would result in mass upheaval, the empowerment of Islamic parties, and more fuel for the fire of jihad- thus handily ensuring that the war on terror will go on for years

It's an interesting hypothesis. And that they view election of Hamas is a positive development essentially for this reason (that it allows more overt wars to be fought against hte Arabs) is not necessarily denied by all of the pro-warriors:

[The heads of Hamas] are one and the same with the Palestinian Authority. If they bomb Israel from Gaza — not under occupation anymore, and is therefore, technically, part of the Palestinian state the PLO proclaimed in Algiers in 1988, but never bothered to take responsibility for — that is an act of war, which can be responded to in kind, under the full cover of the internationally recognized right of self-defense. No more excuses that the Palestinians live under occupation, that the PA is too weak to disarm Hamas, that violence is not the policy of the PA. Hamas and the PA will be the same: What Hamas does is what the PA will stand for. -Emanuele Ottolenghi

Of course, in many cases, particularly with those who were not eager for Arab elections but accepted them as invevitable, it is possible that the elections and the empowerment of Hamas, with all that implies in terms of Israel or the U.S. getting a pass to go to war, is seen as a lucky accident. But there are some (presumably those who were democratists from the beginning, although I'll have to look through their earlier writings to be certain) who seem to feel that this election was a good plan, because it gives us a "moment of truth," presumably one that was part of the plan all along:

...the policy of democratizing the Middle East creates a win-win situation for America and the free world...
But if the pessimists are right it is to our advantage that we discover now that the Arab world and Islam is fundamentally incompatible with our liberal democratic values, and that their goal of seeking a global caliphate means they are permanently at war with everything we stand for. If the clash of civilizations is inevitable, it's better we learn this when we're stronger, when we have the stronger military and the nuclear weapons, and can defeat them in an all-out war and destroy them before they destroy us. -Daniel Freedman

So was the democratization of the Middle East all along a ploy so that we could justify the conquest of the Arab world? Perhaps. If so, then the who claimed that democracies never went to war with each otehr, so democratization is the surest path to peace was a blatant lie. (Assuming that the democratists claiming this overlapped with those who were hoping for the election of extremists).

That is all.