The Great Arab Revolt

The Arab world’s presidents for life and absolute monarchs are quaking in the aftermath of the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions. Arab politics had been stuck in a vast logjam for the past thirty years, from which its crowds are now attempting to blast it loose. The protesters put their fingers on the phenomenon of the vampire state and concluded that before anything important could change, they had to put a stake through its heart.Under European colonialism the Middle East had a few decades of classic liberal rule in the first half of the twentieth century. Egypt, Iraq and Iran had elected parliaments, prime ministers and popular parties. However, liberal rule was eventually discredited insofar as it proved to be largely a game played by big landlords overly open to the influence and bribery of grasping Western powers.In Egypt and Tunisia, once the ruling families were gone, the interim governments promptly froze the accounts of regime cronies and in many instances initiated legal proceedings against them. Seeing the writing on the wall, the ambitious resigned en masse from the now notorious former ruling party; the RCD in Tunisia was dissolved altogether.Many among the demonstrators, whether union organizers, villagers or college graduates, seem to believe that once the lead log in the logjam is removed, the economy will return to normal and opportunities for advancement will open up to all. Somewhat touchingly, they have put their hopes in free and fair parliamentary elections, so that the Middle East may be swinging back to a new liberal period, formally resembling that of the 1930s and ’40s. If these aspirations for open politics and economic opportunity are blocked again, as they were by the hacienda owners and Western proconsuls of the mid-twentieth century, the Arab masses may turn to more desperate, and dangerous, alternatives.

My opinion is that anyone cognizant of the polling data from arabs concerning natural rights, women's tights, honor killings, religious tolerance, free trade, and a myriad of other things should know they are not on the verge of a liberal age.If democracy means anything, it means weak corrupt government, and even more democracy is the last thing Arab nations need. More likely if something isn't fixed soon the masses in Arab might become very dangerous and another revolt may be started.

Kristie Aranda(Period 2)
http://www.thenation.com/article/158682/great-arab-revolt