The Iraqi spark?

Something big is going on in the Middle East. Here’s Jackson Diehl in “A Mideast Makeover? – Popular protests spur changes from autocrats”:

As thousands of Arabs demonstrated for freedom and democracy in Beirut and Cairo last week, and the desperate dictators of Syria and Egypt squirmed under domestic and international pressure, it was hard not to wonder whether the regional transformation that the Bush administration hoped would be touched off by its invasion of Iraq is, however tentatively, beginning to happen.

And Michael Barone says that “Minds are Changing” both in the Arab world and across Europe:

Minds are changing in Europe, too. In the left-wing Guardian, Martin Kettle reassures his readers that the Iraq war was "a reckless, provocative, dangerous, lawless piece of unilateral arrogance" -- the usual stuff. "But," he concedes, "it has nevertheless brought forth a desirable outcome which would not have been achieved at all, or so quickly, by the means that the critics advocated, right though they were in most respects."

Or read Claus Christian Malzahn in Der Spiegel. "Maybe the peoples of Syria, Iraq or Jordan will get the idea in their heads to free themselves from their oppressive regimes just as the East Germans did," he writes. "Just a thought for Old Europe to chew on: Bush might be right, just like Reagan was."

These articles were written before the collapse of the Syrian-backed government in Lebanon today. It’s just like the months after the fall of the Berlin Wall.