Bush was right

Not long ago, President George W. Bush was considered naive for suggesting that the promotion of democracy in the Arab world should be a staple of American foreign policy. Two years ago, the same charge was whispered against President Barack Obama, when he suggested, in his Cairo address to the Muslim world, that self-government and freedom “are not just American ideas, they are human rights.” True, due to the exigencies of pursuing the nation’s strategic interests, neither man actually pressed very hard for democratization. Still, the more important point is that both were subjected to lectures from experts who insisted that somehow even to speak about democracy and freedom in the Arab lands was to show oneself to be a hopeless romantic, insufficiently hardheaded, out of touch with reality.

As of today, that essentially racist assumption is dead. That is the lesson of the popular revolution that has overthrown the ruler of Tunisia and caused the seemingly eternal president of Egypt to promise not to run for another term. (Presumably he will be gone well before his term expires.) The king of Jordan is forming a new government. The Yemen regime is worried. Even in Riyadh, uneasiness must be growing.