Egypt protests show George W. Bush was right about freedom in the Arab world

[Capitan Zapp Brannigan]

Dubya was obivously right on this, and pretty much all foreign policy matters.

Iraq War?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

-Egyptians (Sunni Muslims) rise up against their tyrannical ruler -> immediate outpouring of sympathy from the Muslim world.

-Iraqi Shias and Kurds wage successive uprisings against Saddam during his brutal reign -> indifference at best, supportive at worst... ethnosectarian factor, anyone?

Obviously.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Of course he wasn't wrong about that. Where he went wrong was thinking it was America's job to "liberate" these people. These things need to happen from within, like we see in Tunisia and Egypt.

Basically, yes. Of course I've always thought and will always think democracy is universal, but trying to impose it by force is an utter failure.

[Beet]

The transition wasn't that painful in South Korea and Taiwan, nor, more to the point, in Indonesia. But you are right I was making the same argument myself on Friday we should not expect that it will automatically emerge fully formed.

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

Beet, this is a boderline trolling.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

The UK, Scandinavia, Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, all have one thing in common, they didn't obtain democracy by war or revolution. The only exception to that I can think of is the US, but you guys are the exception that confirm the rule.

Not really.  We had democracy over here (albeit not a total democracy by modern standards) prior to the Revolution.  We had also had de facto autonomy in America since the time of the Glorious Revolution in 1688-9.  Parliament's efforts to reign in that autonomy after the Seven Years War were a primary cause of the revolution.