Egypt's 'Heroes With No Names'

[Valin]

WSJ:

We must remember that Mohamed Atta and Ayman Zawahiri were bred in the tyranny of Hosni Mubarak.
FOUAD AJAMI
2/12/11

He took pride in the claim that he would not quit the land, would not give up his country to chaos. His apologists said that he should be given the time to write his own legacy. But the abdication of Hosni Mubarak had become inevitable. Deaf to the sounds of his own country, blind to the disaffection with him and his reign, Mr. Mubarak gave it all before reality set in.

(Snip)

No turbaned ayatollah had stepped forth to summon the crowd. This was not Iran in 1979. A young Google executive, Wael Ghonim, had energized this protest when it might have lost heart, when it could have succumbed to the belief that this regime and its leader were a big, immovable object. Mr. Ghonim was a man of the modern world. He was not driven by piety. The condition of his country—the abject poverty, the crony economy of plunder and corruption, the cruelties and slights handed out to Egyptians in all walks of life by a police state that the people had outgrown and despaired of—had given this young man and others like him their historical warrant.

(Snip)

It will be said that the great, enduring dilemmas of Egypt—a huge country that has lost out in the game of nations—will still be there. There will be accounts to settle, a struggle between those who were sullied by the dictatorship and those who weren't. The Egyptians will be tested again as to their fidelity to democratic ways. But if this standoff that ended in the demise of the dictator is any guide, the Egyptians may give us a consoling tale of an Islamic people who rose to proclaim their fidelity to liberty, and who provided us with a reminder that tyranny is not fated for the Arabs.



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And now the "fun" begins A question that is being asked. Are the Arabs really ready for democracy? The answer will be played out over the coming years.

[Pepper]

(If Democracy means universal access to Twitter and Facebook, let's welcome them to the wonderful world of great ideas)^sarcasm