Back in 2003, it must have been the dream of George W. Bush and his acolytes to see the scenes of revolution in a capital city of the Arab world. These people believed that unilateral invasion of the heart of the region, Iraq, would bring spontaneous democratic revolutions throughout the Middle East. Instead, of course, the ill-fated Iraqi invasion became a massive quagmire and managed to accomplish the seemingly impossible task of making the Arab world hate America even more.
The neoconservative fantasy ultimately went down in flames in Iraq and Afghanistan. And now today in Cairo, we finally see that celebration in the recent Egyptian revolution, which ironically enough has proven to be the official denunciation of the Bush Doctrine.
Bush believed that freedom and democracy would only be possible in the Middle East if the Americans forcibly pushed it into the region. During this time, Bush asserted that “the defense of freedom requires the advance of freedom,” meaning specifically the military advance of freedom. For a variety of reasons then, Bush decided that Iraq would be the best test case and cherry-picked evidence of weapons of mass destruction to justify an invasion. Yet Bush couldn’t realize that one could never be free if their freedom was given to them by others.
The nonviolent, homegrown overthrow of Hosni Mubarak has finally, conclusively proven Bush wrong. Only the Egyptian people themselves could decide and achieve their freedom. President Barack Obama, however, understands this fact and also understands that the best method to achieve freedom is with nonviolence. On the day Mubarak was forced from office, Obama compared the Egyptians to the “Germans tearing down a wall, Indonesian students taking to the streets, Gandhi leading his people down the path of justice.” All of the revolutions Obama invoked, now including Egypt, were peaceful, internal revolutions for freedom and democracy. They prove that democracy, freedom, and justice must come from within, not from without, and that these rights are best won through peaceful protest, not overwhelming violence.
While this Egyptian revolution was sudden, it should not have been altogether unexpected. The Middle East Youth Initiative estimates that close to two-thirds of the Middle Eastern region is under the age of 30. The median age in Egypt, in fact, is only 24. As we saw in Iran in 2009 and today in Egypt, there is a whole new generation ready to take power in the Arab world, and the scenes in Cairo should make us all highly anticipative of what they can accomplish.
Nick Field is a junior in the School of Public Affairs and a liberal columnist.
