William Kristol: Arab Spring Is Obama's Moment
[William Kristol is a monthly columnist for The Post and a contributor to its political opinion blog, PostPartisan.]
It is of course possible, and probably likely, that the Arab Spring of 2011 will fail, as other springs in the Middle East and elsewhere have never come to fruition.
There would still be a case, for reasons of honor and duty, for the United States to try to help, to do the right thing, to stand with the opponents of tyranny, even if one thought them likely, even nearly certain, to fail.
But we don't know they'll fail. And it would be terrible for the United States to have stood by, encumbered by uncertainty, weakened by sophistication, paralyzed by self-doubt, as we did little more than watch the uprisings across the Middle East and fret as a possibly historic moment slips away. Not only because that moment could vindicate American principles and mean a gain for American interests but because we claim those American principles to be universal principles - not realizable always or everywhere but to be approached when and where possible...
Read entire article at WaPo
It is of course possible, and probably likely, that the Arab Spring of 2011 will fail, as other springs in the Middle East and elsewhere have never come to fruition.
There would still be a case, for reasons of honor and duty, for the United States to try to help, to do the right thing, to stand with the opponents of tyranny, even if one thought them likely, even nearly certain, to fail.
But we don't know they'll fail. And it would be terrible for the United States to have stood by, encumbered by uncertainty, weakened by sophistication, paralyzed by self-doubt, as we did little more than watch the uprisings across the Middle East and fret as a possibly historic moment slips away. Not only because that moment could vindicate American principles and mean a gain for American interests but because we claim those American principles to be universal principles - not realizable always or everywhere but to be approached when and where possible...