Five or six years ago, it felt like the springtime of the Arabs. The Iraqi experiment had survived the assault on it by the jihadists, the media, and the rulers of the neighboring Arab states. Much as Arabs discounted the new order in Iraq as the imposition of an American imperium, much as they spoke of a despotic Iraqi culture that knew no middle ground between anarchy on one side and tyranny on the other, a democratic example was putting down roots in the most arid of soil.
The Lebanese, doubtless to their own astonishment, had come out into the streets of Beirut to demand the end of Syrian rule and tutelage over their country. The small republic by the Mediterranean had found its voice, and its Cedar Revolution bore a striking resemblance to the revolts that brought down Communist rule in Eastern and Central Europe.
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