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February 13, 2011
Annals of Revolution
Recent human history is replete with popular revolutions that toppled governments. In a sense, the successful American Revolution, by bankrupting France, led immediately to the French Revolution. Considered together, the two may be seen as ending the hereditary monarchies envisioned in the Divine Right of Kings, an doctrine rooted in the questionable idea that temporal rulers derive their legitimacy from divine sponsorship. Two World Wars were then fought in the early Twentieth Century over the remnants of hereditary empires; the Bolshevik Revolution ended Russia's participation in the First World War before emerging at the head of a new kind of imperial autocracy that reshaped the world before failing economically when the West produced better consumer goods after both sides had excluded that nuclear war was not a viable option.In a real sense, the youthful, and largely peaceful, protest that just ousted Hosni Mubarak after 30 years of authoritarian rule in Egypt may have been foreshadowed by an American precedent: the youthful counterculture that flared in the late Sixties and early Seventies before being swept aside by a combination of its own youthful excesses and Richard Nixon’s “war” on drugs. Ironically, Nixon, the only American President ever forced, a la Mubarak, to leave office by popular revulsion, is now remembered for a disgraceful triple legacy most would like to forget: his futile bombing of Laos and Cambodia, our failing drug war, and Watergate.
It’s still much too early to tell how the vacuum left behind by Mubarak will be filled, but one has to be impressed by the youthful enthusiasm and sincerity of the protesters; also their movement’s potential for threatening other Muslim autocracies. It was also very instructive to learn that the United States, which is increasingly unable to balance its own books, has been keeping peace in the Middle East by bribing Israel and Egypt not to go to war with each other.
Simple logic should tell us that’s not a policy that can be sustained for very long and my instincts tell me that the protesters we just saw in Tahrir Square are not itching to invade Israel.
Doctor Tom
Posted by tjeffo at February 13, 2011 01:35 AM