Look at where these countries are at: Libya - civil war Syria - civil war & ISIS Egypt - Islamist government overthrown in military coup Bahrain - Shia suppression Yemen - civil war, Saudi bombings Iraq - ISIS And now Tunisia:
Exactly - this is the start of a process that will take decades at best. It's not like the American revolution was smooth. We built a government, decided it was not functional, re-did the whole thing a decade later, had a deadly civil war about 70 years after that, etc. And that was in an environment not plagued by internal violence / instability.
It's a valid question. We tend to sloppily think of human history as steady progress. In many ways, that has been true in the last couple of centuries, especially in terms of lifespan and standard of living, but that doesn't mean it's an irreversible and unstoppable force of progress. Change can definitely be and has previously been very negative, and some nasty ass theocratic empire could emerge in the middle east or it could devolve to some sort of violent semi-permanent tribal nightmare land. I love to be optimistic, given the chance, but the latter picture seems to be the current trajectory, as opposed to "and then a peaceful democracy happened"!
The French Revolution led to Napoleon and every European power crushing France--but it also led to the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.
Increasing chaos is the natural course of anything over time. Order and simplification are always losing to chaos. The only thing that really brings order to human organization is overwhelming power and the will to use it without discretion. But even that becomes more chaotic over time. The widespread proliferation of equally deadly arms over the region pretty much make the conflict endless. No one is going to come in and dominate any of the regions you mention. But failure? Only if you were expecting the United States of Arabia or something. I had some naive hope but I quashed that pretty quickly.
Stalin, the Taliban, and Mao all came to power through revolutions. I wouldn't certainly say revolutions have morality to them: they have winners and losers. In other words, revolution for the sake of revolution isn't necessarily a good thing.
People in power never give it up easily, it will take YEARS to work, out - especially when that culture is so married to a flawed religion ideology. Religion has to take a back seat in any modern society as it is intolerant in nature. DD
From a science perspective, I like to urge caution with thinking of "chaos," and "order." References to entropy are plagued with errors, both in physics and definitely outside of it. "Order" is a very human construct. In one very real sense, the universe keeps moving to greater complexity. You go from atoms to molecules and eventually galactic structure and stars and planets. And now we see molecules that can get quite complicated and self-replicate, and very recently in the universe, apparently, human beings who can even think about all these previous steps, etc, etc. Not saying we disagree at all on the bottom line though.
No one knows at this point. That's the nature of life. No one knew who would win when we declared independence or when we had a civil war either.
Once again highlights Obama's lack of strategy. ...and his clueless Secretary of State at the time, Hillary Clinton.
Well, as with all revolutions, the people on top will end up on the bottom for a while, and eventually the people who have been on the bottom will make it to the top. This may happen many times until everyone just runs out of energy.
Actually, it highlights the reality of the world. The only strategy choice was to prop up dictatorships and delay the inevitable, or support popular movements and hope for the best. We've done both over the course of our history with both good and bad results. There's no "right" option there - we don't get to dictate the future of people on the otherside of the world, as much as you'd like to believe otherwise.
The Arab Spring started with good intentions from some free thinkers (Muslims and non-Muslims)/"liberals" in the right sense of the word, not in the sense used in the USA, but because of the cancerous nature Islam plays in that region, Islamists, who are even worse than the previous dictators were, could quickly take over and spread hate, terror and violence. The free thinkers in that region are much worse off than they were before this all started. The Left's "oh it's a process, have some patience, lalala" is quite cynical, actually. Scores of people get slaughtered in the name of Islam, genocide is committed? "Oh, it's a process, have some patience. This all has nothing to do with Islam."
Sometimes, it's not about the United States. Egyptians didn't go to Tahrir Square for Obama or Clinton. They went there because the increase in grain prices internationally was making their lives unbearable. This combined with all of their existing grievances against the Mubarak government drove them to protest/revolt. Not sure exactly what the U.S. was gonna do to make things different. The same goes with Ben Ali, Khaddafi, Assad, etc. Exactly what strategy were the Republicans suggesting that the U.S. takes that would have made a difference? I remember McCain & company were pushing for more bombing of Khaddafi by the U.S. to remove him. I remember GOP yelling about Clinton not being definitive in her early statements against Mubarak. OK, now Khaddafi and Mubarak are gone and things are messy. What would following the McCain strategy have achieved? What else were they suggesting that the U.S. does? Send the military over there to maintain order? How did that work out with invading Iraq. Countries have their own politics and their own problems. This argument is like the post-1949 "who lost China" argument. The Nationalists in China were corrupt and lost the people's support. There really wasn't much that the U.S. could have done to revive the Nationalists.