Just keeping this thread elevated. These events in Tunisia offer the West their best opportunity in years to make true progress against Islamist terrorism.
Will we step up to champion the populace of Tunisia in their quest for greater liberty, a new Parliament, a new constitution, and an new future? To pursue Self-Determination and life, liberty and happiness on their own terms. Or will we reinforced the failures of the exiled regime and attempt to "enforce the rule of law" and return it to power?
"Ben Ali was considered a U.S. ally for cracking down on Islamic extremism, which included jailing militants and forcing opposition politicians into exile, such as Rashid Ghannouchi, leader of the Islamic Renaissance Party."
This is exactly what I have been warning against. We are enabling guys like this to have an open season on oppressing their own populaces in the name of "counterterrorism." Tunisia is just one of many countries where this is true. This is the problem with intel-driven strategy. Intel guys look for threats to governments, they don't look for how the governments themselves are in fact the threat. To conduct security force capacity building in such countries only makes these governments more effective as suppressing their populaces. We have gotten off track, but it is not too late to recover.
The President's comment on this topic from the 14th:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-...events-tunisia
A subtle note to Mubarak buried in this conversation with the president yesterday:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-...-mubarak-egypt
Will this be like a Hungary 1956, or a Hungary 1988? Or somewhere in between? Will this be put down, or will it ripple across the despotic regimes of the Middle East, rolling them back much as Communism and the Soviets were rolled back in Eastern Europe?
This is what opportunity looks like.
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