A quick sampling of lead paragraphs from the top stories in the online edition of The New York Times right now:
Iran - Hundreds of black-clad riot police officers, some in bullet-proof vests, deployed in key locations in central Tehran on Monday to thwart an opposition march in solidarity with the uprising in Egypt -- an event Iranian leaders cheered as the popular overthrow of an Arab strongman.
Yemen - More than a hundred pro-government demonstrators clashed with hundreds of student protesters on Monday at a sit-in at Sana University that called for an end to the authoritarian rule of President Ali Abdullah Saleh.
Bahrain - Skirmishes broke out early Monday between heavily armed police and scattered groups of young people in villages outside of the capital, as this strategically important nation in the Persian Gulf braced to see if the wave of unrest which has toppled two presidents would reach its sun-scorched shores.
Palestine - The prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, Salam Fayyad, dissolved his cabinet on Monday and was immediately re-appointed by the president to form a new one. The move was the latest of a series of political steps taken by the authority after the popular uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt.
So ok, I still don't believe that invading Iraq was right, but it looks like the peoples of the Middle East really do want democracy. Now of course there's a monumental difference between winning it for yourself and having it handed to you -- no, imposed on you -- by a foreign army. As a protester in Tahrir told me early on in the pro-democracy movement here, "This is our struggle, and we don't want any interference, not from the Arabs and not from the West." But maybe it's time to give up once and for all the repeated assertion by American liberals that the Muslim world has its preferred systems of governance and we have ours, and far be it for us to judge which is better, and concede that the conservatives might have been onto something when they insisted that democracy is the only right way to run a country.
Iran - Hundreds of black-clad riot police officers, some in bullet-proof vests, deployed in key locations in central Tehran on Monday to thwart an opposition march in solidarity with the uprising in Egypt -- an event Iranian leaders cheered as the popular overthrow of an Arab strongman.
Yemen - More than a hundred pro-government demonstrators clashed with hundreds of student protesters on Monday at a sit-in at Sana University that called for an end to the authoritarian rule of President Ali Abdullah Saleh.
Bahrain - Skirmishes broke out early Monday between heavily armed police and scattered groups of young people in villages outside of the capital, as this strategically important nation in the Persian Gulf braced to see if the wave of unrest which has toppled two presidents would reach its sun-scorched shores.
Palestine - The prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, Salam Fayyad, dissolved his cabinet on Monday and was immediately re-appointed by the president to form a new one. The move was the latest of a series of political steps taken by the authority after the popular uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt.
So ok, I still don't believe that invading Iraq was right, but it looks like the peoples of the Middle East really do want democracy. Now of course there's a monumental difference between winning it for yourself and having it handed to you -- no, imposed on you -- by a foreign army. As a protester in Tahrir told me early on in the pro-democracy movement here, "This is our struggle, and we don't want any interference, not from the Arabs and not from the West." But maybe it's time to give up once and for all the repeated assertion by American liberals that the Muslim world has its preferred systems of governance and we have ours, and far be it for us to judge which is better, and concede that the conservatives might have been onto something when they insisted that democracy is the only right way to run a country.
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