The Other Captive Nations

02-20-2011 • LewRockwell.com

There is a tendency in the US to chalk the entire revolution up to a kind of anti-Americanism or to Muslim fundamentalism, though there is precious little evidence of that at all. If you listen to the speeches and hear the voices of the young, what you hear are the ideas of 1776. It is the language of universal human rights – the very American creed. The bitter irony for most Americans is the very discovery that our own government has long presided over a collection of client states so cruel and closed that people have no choice but to pour out into the streets en masse, risking life and limb to get rid of pharaoh. It is a fact: these people hate the tyrants. It is also a fact that these are "our" tyrants. The very existence exposes the gross hypocrisy of US foreign policy. God bless these protesters. They are losing their chains. They are changing the Arab world – and the whole globe – by destabilizing and overthrowing the dictators. They are not only doing it without US help. They are doing it despite US support for the dictators they oppose. As such, these revolutions can mean more than the overthrow of despots; they can end in overthrowing the despotic policy and empire headquartered in Washington, DC. Want to join me in the streets?