OF THE MANY silly reasons propounded for leaving Saddam Hussein on his blood-stained throne, the silliest has to be the suggestion that to remove him would promote "instability." As a guiding philosophy for policy-making, the mantra of "instability bad, stability good"--endlessly repeated by foreign policy mandarins--is about as useful as "Great taste, less filling."

Stability is not inherently good or bad. It depends on what kind you're talking about, and what the alternatives are. Stalinist Russia was very stable; one ruler stayed in power for almost 30 years, and anyone who threatened public order was shot or shipped off to the gulag. By contrast, postwar Italy has not been terribly stable; governments seem to change as often as hemlines. But where would you rather live--in Russia in the 1930s or Italy since World War II?

On the stability spectrum, the Middle East is closer to the old Soviet Union than to Italy. Which may seem odd since, in the popular mind, the Middle East is wracked by instability. Indeed, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict generates horrific images of violence for our TV screens on a daily basis. Yet look behind the headlines. The only country in the entire region that sees regular changes of government is Israel, which is now in the midst of yet another election campaign. On the surface, Israel looks pretty unstable. Israel's enemies in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, on the other hand, are models of stability: They have been led by one man, Yasser Arafat, for more than 30

The same pattern holds throughout the Arab world. There was a brief period of instability in the Middle East--of coups and revolutions--following the end of colonial rule after World War II. But since the 1960s the political scene has been all but set in amber. The longevity of Arab rulers, whether styled as presidents, emirs, kings, or prime ministers, recalls that of the Sun King. Muammar Qaddafi has ruled without interruption for 33 years; Saddam Hussein, 23 years; Hosni Mubarak, 21 years; King Fahd, 20 years; Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 13 years; Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen, 24 years; Zine el-Abidine ben Ali of Tunisia, 15 years.

Only the Grim Reaper is able to change rulers with any regularity. When a potentate does pop off, his successor is likely to be his son--a pattern that holds in both monarchies like Jordan (where Abdullah II succeeded Hussein) and thugocracies like Syria (where Bashir Assad succeeded dear old Hafez). Saddam is grooming his two bad-boy sons, Uday and Qusay, to take over the family business. Hosni Mubarak is doing the same with his kid, Gamal. Liberalization is occurring in a few spots like Qatar, Bahrain, and Morocco, but it is a slow and gradual process that has yet to threaten the monarchs' hold on power.

The Arab world has seen no shortage of stability and it has resulted in stagnation and worse. The United Nations recently issued an Arab Human Development Report compiled by a group of Arab scholars. It painted a depressing picture of a region marked by poverty, illiteracy, poor public health, lack of a free press, and little access to the Internet. All this want comes amid plenty--plenty of oil, that is. But ample natural resources have not prevented the Arab world from sinking in many categories to the level of sub-Saharan Africa. One of the few indices where the region scores high is--you guessed it--"political stability."