Althouse: "I started the Arab Spring. Now death is everywhere, and extremism blooming."

December 18, 2015

"I started the Arab Spring. Now death is everywhere, and extremism blooming."

Faida Hamdy, the inspector who confiscated the stall of the vegetable vendor who set himself on fire....

18 comments:

mccullough said...: Lol. She's the Mrs. O'Leary's cow of the Arab apocalypse.; 12/18/15, 12:45 PM
mikee said...: No, she was the last bureaucrat to oppress someone, before the citizens started the Arab Spring. She mistakes her role in the ongoing disaster that is the Mideast.

Her trying to associate herself with the hopeful uprising of enraged citizenry misses the point - they were enraged against her, and all like her.

This post is another example of Althouse celebrating willful blindness. Earlier today there was a post in which Althouse wondered why Rahm Emmanuel wasn't doing better in Chicago, where he had the most incentive to clean up the mess of that city. Again, that was Althouse completely confusing the cause of the problem with attempts to fix it.; 12/18/15, 12:55 PM
gerry said...: She was the spark of the Arab Spring, perhaps, but she should not blame herself for the bloodshed and disaster that followed. That responsibility belongs to the incompetent boob, the great community organizer in the White House who - perhaps intentionally - lost every opportunity to promote democracy in the region.; 12/18/15, 1:11 PM
traditionalguy said...: The mix up here is the Arab spring and the famous saying of the soon to be beheaded Rahm that a Dem Never lets a crisis go to waste. And under Sec'y State Clinton, Ambassador Stephens life is all that went to waste as the dead Khadaffy's weapons were shipped to Syria.; 12/18/15, 1:17 PM
Sebastian said...: If only she could learn to appreciate the rich cultural universe of the "extremists."; 12/18/15, 1:18 PM
Browndog said...: The Caliphate, given the cutesy name "Arab Spring", was started by the Muslim Brotherhood in conjunction with Obama's White House.; 12/18/15, 1:40 PM
harrogate said...: Chris Jericho invented the Arab Spring.; 12/18/15, 2:16 PM
Sammy Finkelman said...: Actually, it was Bradley Manning and Wikileaks who, quite unintentionally, started the Arab Spring.

http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/article/wikihistory-did-leaks-inspire-arab-spring

Makes more sense tahn climate change, which isn't true at all.; 12/18/15, 2:32 PM
David said...: BeeGees. What a voice!; 12/18/15, 3:11 PM
David said...: That's the thing with a revolution. It chooses its own direction, not yours.; 12/18/15, 3:13 PM
n.n said...: The "Arab Spring" failed on its premise. Arabs are competitors for the lands. In particular, the left-wing regimes are competitors with the national regimes.

The extended wars, preemptive coups, refugee crises, and continuing chaos was a predictable outcome that was enabled with premature evacuation and spread with American backing.; 12/18/15, 3:54 PM
The Godfather said...: I wonder. Was there ever really a moment when strong support by the US and other western powers could have channelled some of the movements against authoritarian regimes in the ME into a more liberal course?

Probably a long shot, at best. Yet GWB left Iraq with a semi-functioning, more-or-less democratic government. I wonder what would have happened if GWB's successor had been committed to supporting and furthering that success.; 12/18/15, 4:48 PM
Bob Loblaw said...: That's the thing with a revolution. It chooses its own direction, not yours.

Yep. Revolution is a dicey thing. You may end up better off, but that's not the way to bet, particularly in the short run. French people didn't just pick the term "The Reign of Terror" out of a hat to describe the post revolutionary period.

Nicolae Ceaușescu's wiki page says he once arranged to have troublesome labor leaders receive five minute x-rays so they would die of apparently natural causes, and that his regime was considered oppressive even by other communist countries (and when communists think your regime is oppressive...). The same page says

...according to opinion polls held in 2010, 41% of Romanians would vote for Ceaușescu and 63% think that their lives were better before 1989. In 2014, the percentage of those who would vote for Ceaușescu reached 66%.; 12/18/15, 5:39 PM
Michael Fitzgerald said...: I thought that quote was Obama bragging again.; 12/18/15, 11:05 PM
Etienne said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 12/19/15, 11:53 AM
Char Char Binks, Esq. said...: Springtime For Hamdy.; 12/19/15, 5:12 PM
Unknown said...: I have at least one BeeGees LP ; haven't listened in twenty years but that's a good song. Took me back and it is a brilliant selection to go with the quote. Congratulations.; 12/19/15, 5:46 PM
Char Char Binks, Esq. said...: Needs more tremolo.; 12/19/15, 7:57 PM