“Everything is proceeding as I have foreseen.”

Bret Stephens in the Wall Street Journal: Will Mohammed Morsi join the pharaohs, caliphs, pashas and strongmen that came before him?

I’m reminded of the famous line from Star Wars where the evil Emperor Palpatine says “Everything is proceeding as I have foreseen.” What I found incomprehensible a few years ago is how much hope was fixed on the so-called Arab Spring. There are literally thousands of years of history in the Middle East of pharaohs followed by emperors, kings and dictators. Thinking that a largely illiterate population immersed in Islam should create a democracy is magical thinking. What struck me at the time was how many people in the “mainstream” were caught up in this fantasy. In a way, it explains the election of Barack Obama.