Khouri in a Hurry to Sell the Already-Failed "Arab Spring"

Rami Khouri, a Palestinian journalist whose byline shows up on occasion in the Globe and Mail, pens one this time for the Toronto Star. In it he assures us that the dynamic between seculars and religious nutjobs (my phrase, not his) in "Arab Spring" lands is all for the good. He's certain that, in time, it will bring to much better-run governments, and that in the long run, the people of those countries will be far better off because of it.

Also, unicorns and rainbows will suddenly appear, and yummy falafel balls will fall from the sky to feed the hungry.

Okay, now for the truth of what's likely to happen--an example of which is currently occuring in the Sinai peninsula, ceded to Egypt as part of that infamous peace deal:

But with Hosni Mubarak's removal from power after three decades, government authority has collapsed in much of Sinai, leaving a vacuum where Islamist militant groups are flourishing, posing a security risk to Egypt, neighbors including Israel, and the Suez Canal, the busy waterway linking Asia and Europe.

In Sinai, an arid peninsula the size of Ireland but home to fewer than a million people, groups at the extreme fringe of the Islamist spectrum are expanding, even as Islamists long outlawed by the state enter the political mainstream in Cairo, where they now dominate parliament and are poised to enter government.

In towns where police stations have stood deserted since Mubarak was swept from office after a popular revolt, hardline Islamists are imposing their own authority. They are preaching a strict interpretation of Islam that has brought with it religious intolerance of a kind that shocks even some of the more conservative forces in the Muslim world...

Yeah, I'm sure they're, like, totally stunned. Aghast, even. Never saw that one coming, eh? A lot, in fact, like that sanguine Palestinian, who cannot for the life of him discern the unpleasant reality unfolding smack in front of him. Me? I'm not in the least aghast or even slightly nonplussed. I know that there's a sort of Gresham's Law in operation--bad fundamentalists driving out good (or, at least, perhaps not quite as bad) secularists--whenever these two sides line up in opposition in Muslim lands. And for anyone who thinks I know not of what I speak, I have two words for you: Iranian revolution.