Kristof: Lessons Egypt Is Teaching America

Nicholas Kristof has a terrific piece in the Times about what we can learn from the Egyptian revolution.

Stop treating Islamic fundamentalism as a bogyman and allowing it to drive American foreign policy. American paranoia about Islamism has done as much damage as Muslim fundamentalism itself…

…in Egypt, our foreboding about Islamism paralyzed us and put us on the wrong side of history…

For far too long, we’ve treated the Arab world as just an oil field…

…the biggest loser will be Al Qaeda…

Egyptians have demonstrated the power of nonviolence in a way that undermines the entire extremist narrative…

New technologies have lubricated the mechanisms of revolt. Facebook and Twitter make it easier for dissidents to network. Mobile phones mean that government brutality is more likely to end up on YouTube, raising the costs of repression…

It was Arab satellite television broadcasts like those of Al Jazeera that broke the government monopoly on information in Egypt. Too often, Americans scorn Al Jazeera (and its English service is on few cable systems), but it played a greater role in promoting democracy in the Arab world than anything the United States did.

By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.