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| -Signs, Portents, and the Weather- |
| Year Four: The Arab Spring Proved Everyone Wrong |
| 2014-07-16 |
| by Michael J. Totten [WorldAffairsJournal] Shortly after the Arab Spring broke out at the tail end of 2010, two narratives took hold in the West. Optimists hailed a region-wide birth of democracy, as though the Middle East and North Africa were following the path blazed in Eastern Europe during the anti-communist revolutions of 1989. Pessimists fretted that the Arab world was following Iran's example in 1979 and replacing secular tyrants with even more repressive Islamist regimes. Both narratives turned out to be wrong, and not just because their adherents had the wrong narrative. Any narrative superimposed over this series of events was doomed to be wrong. The Arab Spring isn't one thing. Many countries in the Middle East and North Africa are experiencing wrenching change, but unlike in Eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall, each affected country is moving in different and sometimes opposing directions. Each has its own history, its own narrative.* |
| Posted by:trailing wife |
| #5 I have the older version of that book that I picked up in Singapore before beginning my travels in that corner of the world. An excellent read. |
| Posted by: Pappy 2014-07-16 11:30 |
| #4 The definitive book on the subject is "The Arab Mind", TW. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2014-07-16 08:15 |
| #3 The problem with nationality vs tribalism in the middle east is that the root allegiance in the area is tribal, but western legalism only recognizes lines painted on the map. Which isn't even their map, it was drawn to accommodate commercial interests; it's curiously the same problem we're having on our southern border, in reverse. |
| Posted by: ed in texas 2014-07-16 07:33 |
| #2 This, from Frontpage Magazine, seems to expand on yuor statement, g(r)omgoru. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2014-07-16 06:52 |
| #1 They're not really countries, Mr Totten. And what they're doing is going to hell. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2014-07-16 02:00 |