Will the Mideast Bloom?

Washington Post printed an article by Youssef M. Ibrahim Will the Mideast Bloom?

Listen to the conversations in the cafes on the edge of the creek that runs through this Persian Gulf city, and it is hard to believe that the George W. Bush being praised by Arab diners is the same George W. Bush who has been widely excoriated in these parts ever since he took office.

Yet the balmy breeze blowing along the creek carries murmurs of approval for the devoutly Christian U.S. president, whose persistent calls for democracy in the Middle East are looking less like preaching and more like timely encouragement.

Nowadays, intellectuals, businessmen and working-class people alike can be caught lauding Bush's hard-edged posture on democracy and cheering his handling of Arab rulers who are U.S. allies. Many also admire Bush's unvarnished threats against Syria should it fail to pull its soldiers and spies out of Lebanon before the elections there next month -- a warning the United Nations reinforced last week with immediate effects. For Bush, it is not quite a lovefest but a celebration nonetheless.....

Regardless of Bush's intentions -- which many Arabs and Muslims still view with suspicion -- the U.S. president and his neoconservative crowd are helping to spawn a spirit of reform and a new vigor to confront dynastic dictatorships and other assorted ills. It's enough for someone like me, who has felt that Bush's attitude toward the Mideast has been all wrong, to wonder whether his idea of setting the Muslim house in order is right.....

For now, all the Middle East has are demonstrators and brave voters who, ballot by imperfect ballot, e-mail by e-mail are burying a culture of fear. And for the moment, that may be enough.

Gene @HarrysPlace provided a cartoon that appeared March 3 in a Jordanian newspaper, al-Ghad, that captured the sense that the age of autocracy may be drawing to a close. Political cartoonist Emad Hajjaj drew four statues on pedestals. The one furthest to the right, Saddam Hussein, is cracking at the knees and toppling into an almost identical statue of Syrian leader Bashir Assad, which is teetering into a statue of Mubarak, who is falling into a statue whose face can't be seen.

Arthur Dent commented That cartoon is very sharp. If it had just shown Bashar toppling after Saddam followed by "Etc" the point would have been much less clear - but including Mubarek before "Etc" in a Jordanian newspaper is more than hint that the local regime is also on the way out.

Betsy Newmark said No one knows what will happen here, but my thought is that once people have awakened to the question of why they can't have democracy and others in the region can, they will not soon forget that question.

Pejman Yousefzadeh said Personally, I would have titled the article "The Sudden Love and Adoration of the Arab Street," but that's just me.

Freedom is a powerful seed. It needs to be carefully tended, but when it blooms it will be beautiful.