Everyone is (rightly) thinking about Afghanistan, but I'm still thinking of Tunisia. Each fall I teach a Middle East politics class. And each fall I end our discussion on the Arab Spring with a debate over whether the Arab Spring actually mattered. Most students end...
Apparently separate and relatively peaceful revolutions have now toppled dictatorial regimes in two North African states. What provoked these events? Â While there are a wide range of political and...
Is "people power" contagious? It's easy to find examples of journalists, policymakers and/or analysts, and some scholars arguing that opposition to authoritarian rule is spreading like a winter...
The neocon blogoshere is lit up with more willow witching that the events in Egypt are vindication of the Bush's "freedom agenda." And, they are blasting Obama for his timid response -- apparently,...
So, this is it -- Tunisia is vindication of the Iraq War. Here's Jennifer Rubin's great insight: Recall when President George W. Bush talked about democracy taking hold in Iraq and then the region? Now Bush's vision seems very prescient....One question that deserves further consideration: How much did the emergence of a democratic Iraq have to do with this popular revolt in Tunisia? This is similar to a point Max Boot made recently at Amherst College in a debate with Andrew Bacevich. Boot argued that it was too early to tell if the Iraq war was a success or failure, because as he put it, the...
The Christian Science Monitor is reporting that the hackitivist collective [?] "Anonymous," famous for DDOS attacks on Mastercard and Paypal after the Wikileaks Cablegate fiasco, is attacking the government of Tunisia's website in support of the growing and increasingly violent protests there:"But the unrest has since spread to a wide cross-section of Tunisian society, reflecting broader discontent with inequality and autocratic leaders perceived as corrupt figures who live high on the hog while blocking free expression by average Tunisians (see map showing protest locations). The...