David Ignatius has an excellent column in The Washington Post on the continuing peaceful revolution in Lebanon. He interviews Lebanese opposition leader Walid Jumblatt who has some interesting things to say about the situation in the Middle East:
“It’s strange for me to say it, but this process of change has started because of the American invasion of Iraq,” explains Jumblatt. “I was cynical about Iraq. But when I saw the Iraqi people voting three weeks ago, 8 million of them, it was the start of a new Arab world.” Jumblatt says this spark of democratic revolt is spreading. “The Syrian people, the Egyptian people, all say that something is changing. The Berlin Wall has fallen. We can see it.”
One of the larger goals of the liberation of Iraq was to seed the concepts of democracy into the heart of the Arab world. On January 30th, 2005, the people of Iraq proudly displayed their ink stained fingers in an action that is just as momentous as the German people taking sledgehammers to the Berlin Wall. The effects of this historical moment will be felt for some time now.
We are on the cusp of a Fourth Wave of democratization, and with luck it will transform the Middle East for the better.
