Oh, What a Lucky Man

2011. március 01. 09:21

The Arab spring lifts Barack Obama with its aura. In celebrating the Egyptian people’s triumph, he looked like a man ensconced on the right side of history.

2011. március 01. 09:21

„It has to be said that Obama intuited something, or so it now appears. He got lucky. When, in celebrating the Egyptian people’s peaceful triumph, he quoted Martin Luther King on this great awakening of Arab peoples determined to assert their dignity and gain their freedom, he looked a president in full, a man ensconced on the right side of history. By contrast, the American right has found itself tied up in knots, wondering how to disentangle the words freedom and Arab, the first demanding its hard-wired allegiance, the second demanding its Israel-dictated skepticism. Pity the poor Republican newbies, once so full of certainties, confronted by a nuanced world!


This is an uprising of Arabs, by Arabs, for Arabs. It started with a tiff over a fruit cart in a small Tunisian town to which no American policymaker has ever paid a minute of attention. Much of its historic importance lies precisely in its indigenous nature, now a wellspring of Arab pride. Obama has managed to seize this moment without stealing it. Yes, there were wobbles. But he was fast to hail Tunisians fighting for their rights, he pushed the Egyptian transition through influence over the army, he restrained the violent initial instincts of the ruling al-Khalifa family in Bahrain, and now he is pressing hard to oust Libya’s lunatic tyrant, Muammar el-Qaddafi.

If this is the overdue collapse of a rotten American-backed order in the Middle East, it is also one that suggests the postmortems on American power are once again premature. The Arab spring continues to unfurl at great speed. There are big risks. One is a Libyan vacuum. But there are also immense possibilities now that Arabs can gather, organize and direct their lives, rather than blame others for their powerlessness. I believe 2011, in its passage from Arab rage to Arab responsibility, can be the true antidote to 2001.”
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