Bernard Lewis, the dean of Middle East historians, says: [my bolding]
The Obama administration should ponder something, as should we all: “At the moment, the general perception, in much of the Middle East, is that the United States is an unreliable friend and a harmless enemy. I think we want to give the exact opposite impression”: one of being a reliable friend and a dangerous enemy. “That is the way to be perceived.”
On the prospects of Egyptian democracy, Stanley Kurtz opines:
Successful democratic change like we saw in, say, South Korea, is based on the slow development of a substantial middle class with liberal mores. What’s brought Mubarak down is not the middle class thirst for democracy, but massive unemployment, corruption, and inflation, in a system whose traditional roots have long blocked modernization. This is not a scenario for successful democratization. Everywhere we’ve seen to date, it is a scenario for expanding Islamism.
Michael Walsh cites history to justify his pessimism:
Anyway, when you look at the course of revolution in the modern era, it’s always the same-old same-old:
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- Czar Nicky — Kerensky — Lenin
- Kaiser Willie — Weimar Republic — Hitler
- Shah Pahlavi — Mr. Bani Sadr — Khomeini
Heck, we can even take it one step further:
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- Gorbachev — Yeltsin — Putin
In other words, no matter the high intentions and democratic slogans, it always turns out badly in the end, especially in countries with, shall we say, a natural affinity for despotism.
Me: Let us hope and pray Egypt will be an exception
UPDATE 2/2/11 - Amir Taheri offers a more optimistic take worth noting. Mark Levin interviews the great Jerusalem Post columnist Caroline Glick here (audio). Sobriety and fear can be heard in her voice. Egypt is now a huge military powerhouse. Actually, I think Fred Grandy's earlier audio interview with Caroline Glick is even more poignant. In her MUST READ column, "Clueless in Washington", she writes: (my emphases)