There was never an Arab spring. Yesterday’s events in Tunisia when 17 foreigners were killed by jihadis, not to mention some rather disturbing dis-confirming events in Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Yemen prove that the thirst for reform was not a thirst for democracy. Not surprisingly, the foreign policy analysts in the United States Department of State got it as wrong under the Obama regime as under the irrepressibly stupid reign of G W Bush. This post from 2011 was written on the cusp of enthusiasm, when it was obvious to most of us who knew the region that American astrologers were reading the signs backward. The rest, as they say, is history. Bad history. Embarrassing history.
I’ve just read a WSJ interview by James Taranto with (who else) Paul Wolfowitz–“Wolfie” to his friends. That’s right, the guy who had the distinction of working under two Bush’s and two US defense secretaries–Dick Cheney (under George I) and Donald Rumsfeld (under George II) is now looking for a spotlight and a microphone.
Presumably his two disastrous stints in government, the ones that brought us aucours the beginnings of the Iraq conflict under H.W. and everything else under W. (including a strategy for “finishing what we started”) gives him the right to be quoted. That’s why Cheney and his elves are making the talk show rounds, trying to find enough crumbs of recognition to make a real piece of pie before the Democrats take it all.
In the interview, Wolfowitz claims that Obama missed the clear signals of the Arab spring. If you missed it too, this is the period that…
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The New Oxonian 