Roundup: Media's Take

Richard Cohen: A Democratic Egypt or a State of Hate?

[Richard Cohen writes for the WaPo.] Things are about to go from bad to worse in the Middle East. An Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement is nowhere in sight. Lebanon just became a Hezbollah state, which is to say that Iran has become an even more important regional power, and Egypt, once stable if tenuously so, has been pitched into chaos. This is the most dire prospect of them all. The dream of a democratic Egypt is sure to produce a nightmare. Egypt's problems are im

Tyler Green: The Smithsonian's Lost Integrity

[Tyler Green reports and edits the website Modern Art Notes and is the U.S. columnist for Modern Painters magazine.] On Monday, the Smithsonian Institution's board of regents holds its first meeting since Secretary G. Wayne Clough pulled a controversial video artwork out of an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. It was a blatant act of censorship and a betrayal of the institution's mission. Now the question is, can Clough be an effective leader given the damage he's done?

Clayton Jones: How History Might Really Be Made in Egypt

[Clayton Jones writes for the CS Monitor.] Anyone watching the protests in Egypt might want to remember this old saw of history: For want of a nail, a kingdom was lost. Unexpected events often do suddenly create a surprise tipping point during a political or military struggle. It’s still unclear, for example, whether an American minuteman or a British soldier fired the first shot at the Battle of Lexington on April 19, 1775, launching the American War for Independence.

Arch Puddington: The legacy of Arab autocracy

[The writer is director of research at Freedom House.] Coming on the heels of the Tunisian upheaval, the demonstrations in Egypt and Yemen have triggered considerable speculation about the prospects for change in the Middle East. Some have compared today’s conditions with the situation in 1989 when, much to the world’s astonishment, the entire edifice of European communism collapsed in the face of (with the exception of Romania) nonviolent opposition. There are, of cour

Gideon Rachman: Democracy is back, how awkward

[Gideon Rachman is chief foreign affairs commentator at the Financial Times.] It has taken just six weeks for the arrest of a fruit-and-vegetable seller in Tunisia to spark a chain of events that now threatens to topple the government of Egypt. Watching the revolt against autocracy spread across the Arab world is exciting, uplifting – and also deeply alarming for the world’s major powers, all of which are, in different ways, fond of the status quo. The discomfort of the

G. Murphy Donovan: The Egyptian Revolt and Imperial Islamism

[The author is a former Intelligence analyst with tours at HQ USAF, DIA, CIA, and NSA. He writes also at Agnotology in Journalism and G. Murphy Donovan.] The Arab revolt underway in Egypt may be unique. Previous popular uprisings were underwritten by anti-colonial sentiments. Contemporary revolts (including unrest in Algeria, Tunisia, Yemen, and Jordan) target nationalist or secular governments. The wealthiest Arab states, Saudi Arabia and the Emirates, have been financing the i

Charles W. Dunne: The Right Side of History

[Charles W. Dunne is a scholar with the Middle East Institute in Washington and a former staff member of the U.S. National Security Council. He served as political-military officer in the U.S. Embassy in Cairo from 1999-2002.] The end is now at hand for the government of Hosni Mubarak, ruler of Egypt for the last thirty years. Two outstanding questions face us now: What will the army do? And how should the United States react? Called into the streets by President Mubara

Stephen M. Walt: A Realist Policy for Europe

[Stephen M. Walt is the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University.] Like nearly everyone-including, I assume, Hosni Mubarak himself -- I've been surprised by the speed, scope and intensity of the upheaval in Egypt. As I write this, it's still not clear whether Mubarak will remain in power. Nor do we know how far-reaching the changes might be if he were to leave. We should all be somewhat humble about our ability to forecast where things are h

Nonie Darwish: Dictatorships and Revolutions

[Nonie Darwish is an Egyptian-American human rights activist, and founder of Arabs For Israel, and is Director of Former Muslims United.] The pressure in Egypt has been building for a long time and has now finally exploded – inspired by the events in Tunisia. The fact that the Egyptian government has been taken by surprise is a sign of how disconnected the regime has become from the reality on the ground. Mubarak has wasted many opportunities to transfer power to another administra

Andrew C. McCarthy: Fear the Muslim Brotherhood

[Andrew C. McCarthy, a senior fellow at the National Review Institute, is the author, most recently, of The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America.] At the Daily Beast, Bruce Riedel has posted an essay called “Don’t fear Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood,” the classic, conventional-wisdom response to the crisis in Egypt. The Muslim Brotherhood is just fine, he’d have you believe, no need to worry. After all, the Brothers have even renounced violence! One might wo

John Tierney: Reagan and Obama: Pragmatism Ascendant

[John Tierney is former Professor of Political Science at Boston College .] The cover article in the most recent issue of Time magazine asserts that President Obama sees Ronald Reagan as a role model. In their article, Michael Scherer and Michael Duffy examine how and why Obama finds Reagan's presidency instructive. Over on The Atlantic Wire, Alex Eichler responded to this latest contribution to Reagan-Obama mania by putting the whole preoccupation under the "Cl

David Rieff: Wilting Jasmine

[David Rieff is a contributing editor for The New Republic.] In early December, 1989, rioting broke out in the western Romanian city of Timosoara. Within weeks, the Ceaucescu dictatorship had fallen, the self-styled ‘Genius of the Carpathians’ and his wife, Elena, having been shot by an impromptu firing squad after a trial that was little more than a kangaroo court that condemned them for one of the things they were not guilty of: genocide. Before she was killed, Mme. Ceaucescu is s

Abbas Milani: A Note of Warning and Encouragement for Egyptians

[Abbas Milani is a contributing editor for The New Republic and the Hamid and Christina Moghadam Director of Iranian Studies at Stanford, where he is the co-director of the Iran Democracy Project. His latest book is The Shah.] After days of unrest, after declaring martial law in some of the country’s main cities, the authoritarian leader gave a much anticipated television speech. His tone was repentant. He promised change and reform. The people wanted democracy and he promised to be

Scott MacLeod: A Proud Moment in Egypt's History

[Scott MacLeod is a professor at the American University in Cairo and managing editor of the Cairo Review of Global Affairs. He was Time magazine's Middle East correspondent from 1995 to 2010.] I'd been looking forward to greeting my Egyptian students Sunday, the first day of the spring semester at American University in Cairo. Instead, classes have been canceled and Egypt burns. I am hunkered down in my apartment with the cat. Outside, gunshots ring out through the nig

Anne Applebaum: Egypt's Uprising Should Be Encouraged

[Anne Applebaum is a columnist for the WaPo.] As fate would have it, I am in Davos, at the World Economic Forum, and not in Cairo. All around me is gloom. The markets are down. Oil is up. A thorny bundle of uncertainties has just been thrown at the fragile economic recovery - just as it was all going so well! The other night, I heard a famous economic pundit admit that someone had asked him only a few days earlier whether events in Tunisia had any significance for the world economy.

Elliott Abrams: Bush Was Right About the Middle East

[Elliott Abrams is a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, where he writes a blog called "Pressure Points" on CFR.org. He was a deputy national security adviser in the George W. Bush administration.] For decades, the Arab states have seemed exceptions to the laws of politics and human nature. While liberty expanded in many parts of the globe, these nations were left behind, their "freedom deficit" signaling the political un

Jonathan Cristol: Doubling Down on Arab Dictatorships

[Jonathan Cristol is Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Studies.] A few years ago a friend of mine called me “Edmund Burke” as a pejorative. I took it as a compliment. I prefer slow, careful, incremental change to broad-based, fast-paced change. I believe that deliberative change is generally more beneficial to the American people, than the widespread rioting and upheavals sweeping the Middle East. These anti-government riots may seem like a good thing because they are occ

Robert D. Kaplan: The New Arab World Order

[Robert D. Kaplan is a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security and the author of Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power.] The most telling aspect of the anti-regime demonstrations that have rocked the Arab world is what they are not about: They are not about the existential plight of the Palestinians under Israeli occupation; nor are they at least overtly anti-Western or even anti-American. The demonstrators have directed their ire against unemplo

Dana Milbank: Glenn Beck vs. the Rabbis

[Dana Milbank is a columnist for the WaPo.] After MSNBC let go Keith Olbermann last week, Glenn Beck couldn't resist celebrating. "Keith Olbermann is the biggest pain in the ass in the world," he judged. But Olbermann's departure really should give Beck pause: With political speech coming under new scrutiny, how much longer can Beck's brutal routine continue at Fox News? The latest omen of Beck's end times came on Thursday -- Holocaust Remembranc

Taylor Dinerman: A Sputnik Moment?

[Taylor Dinerman is a senior editor at the Hudson Institute’s New York branch and co-author of the forthcoming Towards a Theory of Spacepower: Selected Essays, from National Defense University Press.] Democrats should be careful when they invoke Sputnik. Their party’s response to the Soviet Union’s achievement may have helped win them three elections, in 1958, 1960, and 1962, but it also helped bring about the Cuban missile crisis and durably poisoned the political atmosphere around