by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
NRO’s\u00a0The Corner<\/em><\/p>\n By summertime, we will begin to see a new clarity in the Middle East. The old narratives \u2014 that American support for authoritarians undermined democratic awakenings; that Iraq was a catastrophe; that we need to reach out to totalitarian regimes like Iran, Libya, and Syria to ensure peace; that Israel continues to impede the future of the region \u2014 will, with the new unrest, be proven valid or invalid in a way impossible to imagine just a few weeks ago.<\/p>\n Questions to be answered: Will promised new plebiscites reflect a desire for constitutional government and human rights, or simply advance, in Hamas style, the illiberal prejudices of the masses?<\/p>\n Will the removal of authoritarians in Egypt and Tunisia, and perhaps a few in the Gulf, end roadblocks to better popular relations with the US, or sadly suggest that pro-Western strongmen were more liberal than their constituents?<\/p>\n Will popular resistance to a Gaddafi, Assad, or Ahmadinejad translate into pro-Westernism, given those leaders\u2019 hatred of the US and its allies, or will the reformers, in conspiratorial and Pavlovian fashion, manage to blame the US for their own anti-American nightmares?<\/p>\n Will observers acknowledge that the current unrest really has little to do with Israel, or find a contortion that blames the Jews for their past\u00a0realpolitik<\/em>relations with leaders like Mubarak and the Jordanian monarchs?<\/p>\n Let us hope that we are not looking at the emergence of something akin to the insidious erosion of Turkish democracy by elected Islamist forces \u2014 or, worse, either a military regime that holds onto power in hopes of finding a new Mubarak in its ranks after zeal dies down, or a careful aggrandizement to theocracy in the style of Khomeini between 1979 and 1981, characterized by simultaneous denials of any desire for religious government and progressive intimidation of and violence against secular idealists.<\/p>\n So far, the only two governments in the Middle East that are both popular and constitutional are in Israel and Iraq, the former a Westernized liberal society and formerly irreplaceable friend of the US, the latter an experiment in novel consensual government under the watchful eye of tens of thousands of US troops.<\/p>\n In some quarters, it will be said of these protests that this was the Arabs\u2019 moment to take destiny into their own hands and prove that both right-wing authoritarians and Islamist and statist totalitarians were aberrations, artifacts of Cold War rivalries, imposed by sinister foreign forces or resulting from uncharacteristic religious zealotry and intolerance in reaction to understandable provocations. That may be, or it may be that these awful governments \u2014 from Baathism to theocracy to seventh-century monarchy to lunatic Gaddafism to military dictatorship \u2014 were all pretty much reflective, in varying degrees depending on local histories, of the values and customs of the masses.<\/p>\n Should be an interesting spring and summer, as the Middle East either proves the doubters prescient or the optimists and idealists justified in their confidence.<\/p>\n \u00a92011 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Exactly what will the people of the Middle East do? by Victor Davis Hanson NRO’s\u00a0The Corner By summertime, we will begin to see a new clarity in the Middle East. The old narratives \u2014 that American support for authoritarians undermined democratic awakenings; that Iraq was a catastrophe; that we need to reach out to totalitarian […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[196],"tags":[1034,1016,58],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-Zm","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3461,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/libya-without-gaddafi-what-to-expect-what-to-watch-for\/","url_meta":{"origin":3804,"position":0},"title":"Libya Without Gaddafi: What to Expect, What to Watch For","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 3, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0The Corner One of the most surreal experiences of my life \u2014 even apart from having a ruptured appendix and emergency surgery in a Gaddafi-government clinic \u2014 was a spring assignment in Libya to lecture on the Roman ruins there (which are quite impressive, since the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Libya"","block_context":{"text":"Libya","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/libya\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3897,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/messy-democracy-still-the-best-course\/","url_meta":{"origin":3804,"position":1},"title":"Messy Democracy Still the Best Course","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 5, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services The Palestinian prime minister, Hamas' Ismail Haniyeh, is shocked. He claims that without his government's knowledge, the until-now unknown terrorist group Holy Jihad Brigades kidnapped two Western journalists (who have since been released) in Gaza. Have Haniyeh and Hamas forgotten their own terrorist\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "September 2006"","block_context":{"text":"September 2006","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2006\/september-2006\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2612,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/missing-our-moment-in-iran\/","url_meta":{"origin":3804,"position":2},"title":"Missing Our Moment in Iran","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 6, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Last month, hundreds of thousands of Iranians took to the streets to protest a rigged presidential election. Our president was extremely cautious in his initial criticism of the Iranian government's fierce crackdown against the protestors. At first, President Obama said that the United\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "July 2009"","block_context":{"text":"July 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/july-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6403,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-israeli-spring\/","url_meta":{"origin":3804,"position":3},"title":"The Israeli Spring","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 29, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Israel's enemies are doing more damage to each other than Israel ever could. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0National Review Online Israel could be forgiven for having a siege mentality \u2014 given that at any moment, old frontline enemies Syria and Egypt might spill their violence over common borders. The Arab\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Israel"","block_context":{"text":"Israel","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/israel\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/2694124784_9314ff7113-300x210.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":476,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-humpty-dumpty-middle-east\/","url_meta":{"origin":3804,"position":4},"title":"The Humpty-Dumpty Middle East","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 4, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services The United States is backing off from the Middle East \u2014 and the Middle East from the United States. America is in the midst of the greatest domestic gas and oil revolution since the early 20th century. 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