ANOTHER FASCINATING ARTICLE IN THE ARAB NEWS:

Countries such as South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia — not to speak of Japan — went ahead by leaps and bounds. These were countries that had been utterly devastated by World War II and other wars in the region.

But they rose from the ashes, and now, with the fall of a tyrant, a fresh breeze is also blowing in the Arab world. A wind of change.

The Arab world, moreover, is younger, with a population that has access to enough information to see others speeding ahead. They are not content to remain bystanders, but want to be travelers themselves on the road to progress.

They aspire to a free society, human dignity and mechanisms that shield them from the oppression and humiliations exercised by the likes of the Baath regime. They want governments that guarantee them the human rights, freedom, justice and equality that are central to the Qur’an and the Sunnah.

They want a society that is tolerant and sovereign and where all views are fairly represented. They want a vehicle that will clear the decks of the medieval garbage that has resulted in regression and stagnation. . . .

We must not let future generations down by bequeathing them a legacy of a society that is divided, a national debt that will break their backs, an educational system that churns out parrots and a society that wallows in self-pity and snivels in mortification at the first sign of a problem.

I hope we’ll see more of this kind of thinking.