The stunning failure of the international commentariat to foresee the seismic shifts that are engulfing the Arab world is reason enough to be guarded about what commentators are now telling us about the causes and meaning of the uprisings.
Until events proved otherwise, many self-appointed experts confidently—sometimes arrogantly—explained that the global movement toward democracy had been spurned by the Arab world simply because liberty and equality were “not part of the Arab makeup.” So it must have come as quite a shock to them that the Arab people turned out to be not so different from the rest of the human race!
While the future course of events is not yet clear, there are certain tentative deductions that I believe we can risk making even now.
The first is the self-evident observation that there are opportunities and there are dangers, including, as witnessed in Libya and, potentially, in Syria,...
