“Every
hope of modern Arab history has been betrayed,” Melhem added. “The
promise of political empowerment, the return of politics, the
restoration of human dignity heralded by the season of Arab uprisings in
their early heydays — all has given way to civil wars, ethnic,
sectarian and regional divisions and the reassertion of absolutism, both
in its military and atavistic forms. ... The jihadists of the Islamic
State, in other words, did not emerge from nowhere. They climbed out of a
rotting, empty hulk — what was left of a broken-down civilization.”
Thomas Friedman adds: "Arab civilization, such as we knew it, is all but gone. The Arab world today is more violent, unstable, fragmented and driven by extremism — the extremism of the rulers and those in opposition — than at any time since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire a century ago."
Our political system is hardly perfect. We've got goofballs and nutjobs in spades. But we'll take it over what they deal with any day.
