A Revolution Foretold

So now the rainbow blood pumps in the hearts of the twittering youth of the Arab revolution. Theirs is not a war of artillery and generals, but of onions and vinegar and Google marketing execs, like 31-year old Wael Ghonim, who said as Hosni Mubarak fell last February, “I have never seen a revolution that was preannounced before.” Arabs planning protests? Arabs seeking democracy? You might think it a mawkish fad, but there are actually some people who “take a different view,” claims The New York Times: “[President Obama] made the point early on, a senior official said, that ‘this was a trend’ that could spread to other authoritarian governments in the region, including in Iran.” Can you imagine?

We needn't imagine, the Lebanese will say: there was the Independence Intifada of Lebanon in 2005, when, emboldened by American power, peaceful protestors of criss-crossed religions and a single confession of solidarity rejected the narrative of Syrian imperialism and Hezbollah militancy, and chose freedom and self-rule. This was in those dusty days before Twitter, but, by God, would you believe that the people were able to communicate with each other through a tradition of the olden days called “talking”?

And before Lebanon there was Iraq. Those who blush upon hearing George W. Bush’s Iraq dabbling called a proper revolution surely never knew (for to have known once would be to never forget) the pain of Iraqi mothers forced to applaud their sons’ short-straw executions and pay the regime for the bullets. The ghost of political opposition bid farewell to the Middle East during the Baathist and Alawite crushings of the early 1980s, and the region had since been a place of whispers and screams. The 2003 Iraqi invasion may have merely brought the screams from the prisons to the streets, but the hushed pamphleteers and poets could suddenly speak louder than ever before. In the darkness surrounding Iraq, glowing eyes watched curiously. After the 2005 elections the mayor of Baghdad said, “the governments of the region are nervous. The people of the region are envious.”

Indeed, not only is there precedent for the recent medley of Arab revolutions (in Tunisia and Egypt as well as foggy-destined Bahrain, Yemen, and Libya), but the precedent is also the cause. Egyptians will laugh and say, “We want the nightmares of Iraq? Right.” But there was a shame in sitting idle as the US Marines Corps and the 82nd Airborne gave Iraqis votes, a free press, female parliamentarians, one of the greatest ecological restorations in history (i.e. the Arab marshlands revival), and new dreams. Maybe Egyptians could dream too.

But fine, supposing the US never brought any revolutions to Iraq, and supposing these recent winds of change were the lone work of Twitter and Wikileaks. In this case, those who blushed before will have to blush again if they say that the shimmering river of the Jasmine Revolution would now be flowing with promise into Mesopotamia: Oh, there would be a revolution all right.

It was strange that people who favored an international military intervention to remove Saddam Hussein from power in 2003 were branded as naïve idealists (to put it most charitably). “You break it, you own it,” said the wise realists. But the US had broken Iraq long ago when the CIA helped Saddam take power, and Saddam’s brutalization of Iraqis had made a future Shia-Sunni kill-fest an irrevocable date on Iraq’s calendar. As Christopher Hitchens predicted in 2002, amid invasion doubts:

the implosion of the Saddam Hussein regime is coming anyway. It’s coming like Christmas. We’re very soon to be faced whatever we do with all the ghastly consequences of a post-Saddam Iraq, which will include indeed Sunni-Shia rivaly, other regional rivalries, the possible intervention of neighboring countries, revenge killing, innumerable unpleasant possibilities.

The real question was not whether a revolution was coming, but whether, when it came, Saddam’s Republican Guard would still have access to the chemical weapons and attack helicopters that they were so experienced in using.

And now, as the Arab League approves a no-fly zone over Libya, where the Egyptian rebels’ caches of tear gas antidotes and muffler plugs will not do, one wonders: where was the righteous Arab League hiding when the US was enforcing a unilateral no-fly zone over parts of Iraq for the decade preceding the invasion. And as Europeans demand a no-drive zone in Libya: is there not a profitable oil-for-food program in Libya that’s worth protecting again? And as Colonel Qaddafi shows “no mercy” to the rebels: what if Qaddafi had not been “nervous” enough about Bush to hand over his chemical weapons stash? And as revolution spreads throughout the region: if Saddam were still in power, who thinks Iraqis would be too passive to take their chance? Who thinks Saddam would let them? And who thinks Iraqis would let the West come anywhere close to their rescue after two decades of European parliamentarians profiting off of their misery, and Americans preaching freedom but ignoring the concentration camp of Iraq?

There has long been a rot in Arab society, and it gave birth to 9/11. “This rot weighs on the world,” Iraqi-born professor Kanan Makiya said. It is a rot that limited Arab revolutions to either vicious coups or Islamist uprisings. But the war in Iraq offered a precedent for a new kind of revolution, “that could spread to other authoritarian governments.” Lebanon followed, and now the region. Today’s is a revolution “preannounced” indeed.

(Photos courtesy of The Founders' Porch)