America’s neoconservative initiative for the Greater Middle East, “creative chaos,” has been checkmated by a Muslim fundamentalist counterstrategy, “bloody chaos.”

Back in 2000, when various neocons from both the Republican and Democratic parties advanced it, the strategy of creative chaos in the Middle East was designed to shake loose secular and theocratic tyrannies. The idea then, as it is today, was that autocracies encroach on freedoms, produce corruption, and breed poverty, anger, and religious fanaticism with their corollary, terror.

Using this theory, secular dictators like Muammar Gadhafi of Libya or Bashar Al-Assad of Syria are as ready for regime change as the Wahhabi fundamentalist royal rulers of Saudi Arabia or the mullahs of Iran.

But sometime in the past two years, America and the West changed course, cuddling up to Colonel Gadhafi and, most recently, proposing a dialogue with the Iranian regime. In their quest for democratic reforms, they have taken a step backward, fearful of yielding greater ground to radical Islam.

The enemy has not flinched, however. The Muslim fundamentalist response, while less ambitious, has been sharply focused, sending a clear message that life outside medieval Islam is not an option for Arabs and Muslims. In this, they have lacked neither will nor resolve in the face of their Western foes, who have faltered.

As always, the consequences have been grave.

In Iraq, where the mission was to replace Saddam Hussein with a democratic, multi-ethnic Iraqi government driven by an oil economy, we got bloody mayhem by pursuing Shiite ayatollahs and Sunni sheiks for their favors. Warring Sunni and Shiite tribes backed by regimes in the region are slaughtering each another as Iran’s mullahs swoop in to take control of much of the country. A large secular Iraqi segment of the population is being driven out of the country or forced to veil its women and live under the growing shadow of Sunni or Shiite fundamentalism.

Instead of refocusing their goals, the politicians in Washington who enthusiastically sent their troops to war are now debating various plans, all aimed at withdrawing those who took Iraq and held it.

Even those of us who counseled against the invasion are adamant that abandoning such a strategic asset to Iran, Syria, Muslim fundamentalists, and absolute chaos would be catastrophic.

Elsewhere in the Middle East, the results of the West’s lack of convictions are coming back to haunt it.

The optimism generated two years ago by the spread of democratic reforms in the region – a feeling that America, France, and Britain promoted – has devolved into an obscene reassertion of power by all the region’s despots.

Syria has widened its reign of terror over Lebanon, getting away not only with the murder of a former prime minister, Rafik Hariri, but also with a renewed alliance with Iran, Hezbollah’s Shiite army, and Lebanon’s 400,000 Palestinian Arabs, whom Damascus is arming to form yet another militia for the Syrian-Iranian proxy wars in the region.

Saudi Arabia, which has the world’s largest oil reserves, has largely shelved its alliance with America in favor of new ties with China, America’s primary rival for world power. China, the Saudis know, does not demand democratic reforms, just oil.

Over in the Palestinian Arab territories, total chaos now reigns as Palestinian factions war among themselves. The Israelis will take care of themselves, to be sure, but the Palestinian Arab collapse will make the coming years pretty ugly.

Creative chaos is the right strategy when played unflinchingly by the rules, one of which is never to promise a people democratic reform if you do not plan on standing behind it every step of the way. A second is that in today’s Middle East, values that include democracy, civil society, and separation of mosque and state must prevail if the region is to become peaceful.

The West must unite behind a policy of imposing more sanctions on Syria for meddling in Lebanon and Iraq. Iran should be ignored, not embraced. The country has a long way to go before it acquires any weapons of mass destruction, but a shorter way toward more economic sanctions and international isolation. Israel should go back into Gaza and topple the Hamas regime.

Above all, Iraq needs to be won.

The alternatives are so dark they cannot be contemplated.