Talkin' 'Bout a Revolution

[David Morris]

Remember the "Arab Spring?"  Now it's just another failed revolution,
right?  Well, Juan Cole says we should take the long view.

http://www.juancole.com/2014/06/youth-movements-wrought.html

Three and a half years ago, the world was riveted by the massive crowds of
youths mobilizing in Cairo’s Tahrir Square to demand an end to Egypt’s
dreary police state.  We stared in horror as, at one point, the Interior
Ministry mobilized camel drivers to attack the demonstrators.  We watched
transfixed as the protests spread from one part of Egypt to another and
then from country to country across the region.  Before it was over, four
presidents-for-life would be toppled and others besieged in their palaces.

Some 42 months later, in most of the Middle East and North Africa, the
bright hopes for more personal liberties and an end to political and
economic stagnation championed by those young people have been dashed.
Instead, a number of Arab countries have seen counter-revolutions, while
others are engulfed in internecine conflicts and civil wars, creating Mad
Max-like scenes of post-apocalyptic horror.  *But keep one thing in mind:
the rebellions of the past three years were led by Arab millennials,
twentysomethings who have decades left to come into their own.  Don’t count
them out yet.  They have only begun the work of transforming the region.*
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