American soft power will never attract Osama bin Laden and the extremists.

The Alliance seeks to give a central role back to people of goodwill, rather than to fanatics and extremists who foment division and hate.

So the dividing line in Pakistan is not between liberals and extremists, but between those who support the status quo and those who oppose it.

Finally, Ahmadinejad is likely to be bolder in subverting stability in Iraq, and his victory will encourage radical Iranian officials and extremists within Iraq itself.

All the while, Assad was describing the violence as the product of terrorists and Sunni extremists seeking dominion over minority Alawites, Druze, Kurds, Christians, and other groups.

And they must win people s allegiance by the power of their values and their ideals not only by isolating terrorists and extremists, but also by helping, in meaningful ways, poor countries to prosper.

Uzbekistan would view calls for such an investigation as unjustified pressure on the country, which would push Central Asia into turmoil and allow terrorists and extremists to exploit the situation.

More important, electoral politics aside, they would be helping to craft better societies whose politics are shaped by reasonable debate among citizens, not distorted by the community destroying behavior of smugglers and extremists.

Only hard power can deal with them. But soft power will play a crucial role in attracting moderates and denying the extremists new recruits.

Sometimes this involves overt conflict between moderates and radicals within one side, such as when an Israeli religious zealot assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin when peace negotiations were making progress.

Politically active women, those who did not follow a strict dress code, and women human rights defenders were increasingly at risk of abuse, including by armed groups and religious extremists, Amnesty International said in its 2007 report.

But did the battle between pragmatists and radicals end there? In the early 1970 s, moderates gained by engineering a rapprochement with the US, capped by Nixon s famous visit to China in 1972.

Unfortunately, Syria s moderate Sunnis came under attack from two sides Assad s government and extremist adherents of Wahhabism, Islam s most intolerant school of thought.

So the dividing line in Pakistan is not between liberals and extremists, but between those who support the status quo and those who oppose it. Parties that call themselves democratic are not only going along with Musharraf in this fraudulent election, but are also helping to restore the status quo.