Friday, December 01, 2006

Will the Middle East Miss Bush?

Maybe.

Instead of democracy, many progressives have come to romanticize "resistance." They have become attracted to the same rhetorical motifs projected by liberation movements of a generation past and Islamists today. Embrace of multiculturalism has morphed into a cultural relativism that justifies oppression in the name of culture.

The majority of Arab civil society may celebrate Bush's election rebuke and welcome the end of the Bush years but, as anger fades and Washington re-embraces realism, Arab reformers from Rabat to Riyadh may find they have missed their best opportunity, while dictators and theocrats seize theirs.