GOOD IDEA

The Bush administration made a broad pledge yesterday to spread democracy and free markets to the Middle East, promising to move beyond the recent focus on Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in an ambitious but vaguely defined project to transform a troubled region.

Calling the development of freedom in the Middle East the "security challenge and the moral mission of our time," national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said the United States and its allies must make a "generational commitment" to Middle Easterners who live under oppressive and often corrupt governments.