If the Arab Spring Wasn’t Dead Already, It is Now
If the Arab Spring Wasn't Dead Already, It is Now by Ishaan Tharoor, Washington Post
For well over a year now, the Arab Spring has struggled on life support, doomed to die with barely a whimper. Instead, it ended definitively with the bang of U.S. airstrikes in Syria, coordinated with five of the Arab world's most authoritarian states. The long winter of a protracted war with the Islamic State and affiliated jihadists now seems here to stay.
There was a time when the White House genuinely had hope that people power and pro-democracy uprisings could reshape the Middle East. In a famous speech in May 2011, President Barack Obama likened the dramatic self-immolation of a fruit seller in Tunisia, which triggered protests that toppled a long-ruling autocrat, to the defiance of Rosa Parks and the agitators of the Boston Tea Party…
