What we learned from the events of Arab Spring

This past spring, the world witnessed several populist uprisings across the Arab/Muslim world which sought to bring about democratic reforms. In places such as Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, the people used social media such as twitter and facebook to organize mass protest demonstrations against their respective governments. These protests successfully forced the Egyptian and Tunisian governments to step aside and make way for democratic reforms. In all these populist movements, with little direct U.S. intervention have proved successful in setting the groundwork for true democratic reforms in the region.

In this light, the Bush Administration's path to War in Iraq was clearly the wrong move that has produced poorer results. The U.S. has been in Iraq for almost 8 years and does not seem any closer to seeing a stable Iraqi government. It is not out of the realm of imagination that had the U.S. simply continued the Iraq policy of enforcing the no-fly zones and using the U.N. to apply economic and diplomatic pressure on Saddam's government, that populist uprisings could have happened there as well this spring. Like Egypt and Tunisia, Iraq was a fairly modern company which boasted a healthy technological infrastructure, the elements utilized in mobilizing the protests elsewhere. We could have achieved the same end result, the removal of Saddam from power, without spending billions of dollars, and without the loss of life all have suffered over the last 8 years.