Mark it on your calendar: Next month, the Arab Middle East will revolt.
However, generals with tanks and terrorists with fatwas won’t be leading the revolution. This time, Arab moderates and liberal reformers — the Middle East’s genuine rebels — are the insurgent vanguard. . . .
enforced by terror) kept Arab moderates and democratic reformers in the Arab alley or the Arab jail. The Arab street also has served as a theater for choreographed displays of anger, usually directed at Israel and America. Addressing the real sources of Arab deprivation and degradation, autocratic oppression and systemic corruption, was verboten.
America’s reaction to 9-11 — specifically, its strategic offensive reaction — is taking the gun out of hands of tyrants and terrorists. Removing Saddam Hussein began the reconfiguration of the politically dysfunctional Arab Muslim Middle East — a dangerous, expensive process, but one that gives Middle Eastern moderates the chance to build states where the consent of the governed creates legitimacy and where terrorists are prosecuted, not promoted.
Let’s hope. Read the whole thing.