Progress in the Middle East

There's a growing number of examples of movement toward greater freedom and democracy in the Middle East. The latest are in Lebanon, Syria, and Egypt, as discussed today by Jackson Diehl in his Washington Post column.

As thousands of Arabs demonstrated for freedom and democracy in Beirut and Cairo last week, and the desperate dictators of Syria and Egypt squirmed under domestic and international pressure, it was hard not to wonder whether the regional transformation that the Bush administration hoped would be touched off by its invasion of Iraq is, however tentatively, beginning to happen. ...

If a Middle East transformation begins to gather momentum, it probably will be more messy, and the results more ambiguous, than ... European revolutions. It also won't be entirely Bush's creation: The tinder for ignition has been gathering around the stagnant and corrupt autocracies of the Middle East for years. Still, less than two years after Saddam Hussein was deposed, the fact is that Arabs are marching for freedom and shouting slogans against tyrants in the streets of Beirut and Cairo -- and regimes that have endured for decades are visibly tottering. Those who claimed that U.S. intervention could never produce such events have reason to reconsider.

It will be interesting to watch the anxiety among dedicated Bush haters as they try to digest these growing signs of progress in the region and success in American policy. Diehl credits the Bush Administration somewhat half-heartedly, but at least he's honest enough to give some measure of credit. Will leftist Bush haters be equally honest, or will they do their best to deny the facts while hoping inconvenient signs of progress just go away? Let's hope the politics of hate don't blind them to the tremendous progress we're helping to achieve in the Middle East.