After a breathtakingly long and broad wave of optimistic reporting on Democratic trends in the Middle East, including many that at least considered giving George Bush credit, the tide has finally begun to ebb.
Those who want to crush the story seem to be presenting three arguments:
1) It isn't happening. All the apparent democratic trends are just smoke and mirrors.
2) What is causing it to happen has nothing to do with Bush. All this was going to happen anyway and was merely retarded by Bush's invasion of Iraq.
3) Bush caused it to happen for altogether corrupt and nefarious reasons.
I haven't made an exhaustive list, but Seumas Milne of the Guardian managed to hit numbers 1 and 3 in a more or less logical way. A commentary in realclearpolitics makes the second point. Robert Kuttner hammers in number one in the Boston Globe.
Most of these miss the point. No one is uncorking the champagne yet, and yes, Saudi Arabia is still a repressive autocracy. But preciously that reason any democracy there, especially with Shiite representation and a promise to include women next time, is really something.
Lebanon is a very fractured society, but so is Iraq and there are some signs that that is working. The pro-Syrian Hezbollah faction can turn out several hundred thousand folk on a good day, with hundreds of buses paid for by the Ophthalmologist next door. But the pro-independence faction can keep tens of thousands in the streets day after day.
Finally, it is absurd to argue that GWBush gets no credit. When someone makes a prediction and acts on it, and it turns out like he said it would, that's all the evidence you will ever get that he made it happen. Besides, if the Democrats keep trotting out coincidence to explain the foreign policy success of Reagan and Bush 43, people will probably conclude that if the Republicans ain't smart they're damn sure lucky. And that might keep them in the White House for a good long time.
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