Revolution in the Arab World - Observation of a lost soul Blog

foreign policy • revolution in the arab world • rumblings
Introduction
The rumblings of revolution in the Arab world were not difficult to hear,
fueled as they were by political stagnation, crumbling public services, endemic
police brutality, mass unemployment, a building sense of failure and
humiliation. Across the Middle East, populations bulging with restive, angry
youth dreaming of better lives were ruled by geriatric tyrants. For years,
the only question had been when they would explode, not if.
And yet even those who should have known better refused to acknowledge
reality. On Jan. 25, 2011, the day Egypt’s revolt began, U.S. Secretary
of State Hillary Clinton said, “Our assessment is that the Egyptian government
is stable and is looking for ways to respond to the legitimate needs
and interests of the Egyptian people”—an assertion that managed to be as
politically inastute as it was factually untrue.
After the aborted “Arab Spring” of 2005-2006 and the failed 2009 uprising
in Iran—both of which were swiftly crushed by the regimes—many argued
that the peoples of the Middle East simply weren’t ready for change, or that
the region’s many autocrats were too wily or too powerful to be unseated.
Scenes of smiling Iraqis waving purple fingers were quickly subsumed by
images of sectarian carnage and bearded Islamists burning American flags.
Perhaps the region was doomed to a dark future of violence, dictatorship,
and backwardness But what many missed, as Karim Sadjadpour argued in
a moving June 2010 essay about the Green Movement, is that the biggest
political grouping in Iran, and perhaps the Middle East, is the “party of the
wind”—fence sitters who may not like their regime, but are willing to accommodate
it as long as it seems strong. And right now, the winds of change
are blowing at gale force.
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