Thomas in Arab Wonderland

Some see angry mobs of Arabs (some of which are apt to rape a blonde infidel to the cry of "Jew! Jew!"; others of which do awful things to Copts) and think of the fabulous potential for--to borrow a worn out phrase--"hope and change." Others see the same seething masses and discern the rot wrought by Islam and the potential for tons more chaos and anger as they turn on each other--and on us. Thomas L. Friedman, you probably won't be surprised to learn, belongs in the former category. Friedman, who has yet to shake off his Tahrir Square euphoria, is tickled by the ongoing turmoil. It's so much more meaningful and authentic, don't you know, than what Bush and Co. tried to do in Afghanistan and Iraq (admittedly, an effort fatally compromised by shackling it to sharia), because this time around no infidels were involved and it's Arab DIY all the way. (Too bad in those precincts DIY also stands for "damned infidel Yahud.") Anyway, here's today's TLF gush:

When one looks across the Arab world today at the stunning spontaneous democracy uprisings, it is impossible to not ask: What are we doing spending $110 billion this year supporting corrupt and unpopular regimes in Afghanistan and Pakistan that are almost identical to the governments we’re applauding the Arab people for overthrowing?
Ever since 9/11, the West has hoped for a war of ideas within the Muslim world that would feature an internal challenge to the violent radical Islamic ideology of Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. That contest, though, never really materialized because the regimes we counted on to promote it found violent Muslim extremism a convenient foil, so they allowed it to persist. Moreover, these corrupt, crony capitalist Arab regimes were hardly the ideal carriers for an alternative to bin Ladenism. To the contrary, it was their abusive behavior and vicious suffocation of any kind of independent moderate centrist parties that fueled the extremism even more.

Now the people themselves have taken down those regimes in Egypt and Tunisia, and they’re rattling the ones in Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, Oman and Iran. They are not doing it for us, or to answer bin Laden. They are doing it by themselves for themselves — because they want their freedom and to control their own destinies. But in doing so they have created a hugely powerful, modernizing challenge to bin Ladenism, which is why Al Qaeda today is tongue-tied. It’s a beautiful thing to watch...

Al Qaeda my be "tongue-tied" (although I'm not even sure if that's true--this, this and this tend to refute that claim), but Khomeinism and Qutbism are going like gangbusters. And there's nothing much "beautiful" about that.

Update: Another giddy leftist heard from--a Toronto Star editorialist thrilled by the Arab Spring.