The Arab freedom train rolls on

If George Bush manages to fulfill his vision of a democratic, decent Arab world, he will be remembered by Muslims the same way that Ronald Reagan is remembered by "New" Europe. I have said for years that WMD and eminent attacks are nothing more than fear tactics designed to bring the American people along with him on his grand design for reinventing the world. But all that will be washed away if the trend continues as it is currently going. Libya has not only renounced WMD, but is currently on a gleeful mission to dismantle its socialist state and re-emerge as a legitimate, responsible player on the world stage. Israel is dismantling settlements and establishing final borders for a Palestinian state, Iraqis, Saudis, Kuwaitis and Bahrainians are voting (to some degree or another), Lebanon is trying to shake off Syria, Egyptians are defying their government and protesting in the streets and Sudan is signing peace agreements faster then they can print them. Tom Friedman observed that the "Berlin Wall" of the Middle East is beginning to fall, but unlike Europe, it will fall one bloody brick at a time. That could certainly prove to be true. Unlike the Cold War, this is not a battle of ideology or even a battle of systems. It is a fight between the desires of individuals for self-determination and the forces of tyranny. Each of those tyrannies has a unique character and set of circumstances, it is not like Europe where an ideology is discredited and that realization ripples through the system. But that does not mean that there is no ideology coming into play. The difference here is the increasingly wrong assumption of those in the West that believe that the Arab world is simply incapable of self-rule and pluralism. Now chinks are beginning to appear in their armor and their eventual repudiation could remake the world in the most dramatic and positive way since the end of the Cold War. Love him or hate him, George Bush will have been the architect of this historic shift.