Remember the prognostications by sections of the kommentariat prior to the liberation of Iraq from Ba’athist tyranny, suggesting that the so-called
‘Arab Street’ would erupt. The wonderful news is that the Arab Street now appears to be doing just that and demanding democracy.
After decades of malaise in which (to paraphrase Winston Churchill) they have tried just about every other form of government, the Arab world seems to be finally turning to democracy.
Elections for the Palestinian Authority, the
‘purple revolution’ in Iraq, the
‘cedar revolution’ in Lebanon prompting the collapse of the Syrian-franchised government and the promise of greater democratisation in Egypt are winds of change sweeping through the Arab and Islamic world. Perhaps
'Baby Doc' Bashir Assad's hereditary Ba'athist dictatorship in Damascus might be the next domino.
Similar to wars usually being bloodiest in their final battles, the death throes of Arab despotism may not be painless. As Alexis de Tocqueville astutely noted (in the context of the French Revolution):
“Revolutions do not always come when things are going from bad to worse ... Usually the most dangerous time for a bad government is when it seeks to reform itself.”
The incubator for the Islamist terrorism spawned in the Middle East has not been economic poverty, but rather the democratic deficit and consequent dysfunctional societies. The door is till open for the critics of the democracy agenda to get on board the
‘freedom train’ now running through the Middle East. This applies equally to liberal Democrats in the United States, the Left in Australia (Labor, Democrats, Greens), much of Old Europe and apparently even to significant sections of the British Conservative Party.
Update: Christopher Hitchens puts a wooden stake into the
Arab Street chimera.
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