The Egyptian Revolution -- American Style

The latest pictures from Tahrir Square are of clean-up crews, not protesters. Mr. Mubarak has left Cairo and President Obama is wiping his brow and wondering what just happened.

While the State Department and the White House argued over how to handle the crisis in Egypt, the Egyptian people manged to take care of their revolution with little to no help from the American government — but, with a lot of help from American ingenuity.

Names like Obama and Clinton were not nearly as important to the success of the protesters in Tahrir Square as the names Twitter and Facebook.  This revolution was led by an Egyptian youth that has been tuned in and turned on to the world via technology.  They see young people in America starting companies that not only make them loads of money, but change the world. If there was a “face” associated with the revolution it would have to be Wael Ghenim, a man who started a Facebook group for freedom, and just happens to work for Google. Facebook, Twitter, and Google — three companies started by young people in a land of freedom and opportunity have inspired young people in a land of oppression and helped facilitate their revolution.

The movement for freedom from oppressive government that started in Tunisia and got the world’s attention in Egypt has been unloosed: Libya, Bahrain, Jordan, Yemen, and Iran are all hearing the rattling of chains.

This might be a good time for America to re-evaluate its foreign policy.

Mr. Obama received a lot of criticism for not doing more during the 2009 uprising in Iran.  What he did do was state, in no uncertain terms, that America stood for democracy and freedom for all people. He may have wanted to do more but the economic crisis and being strapped with two wars left him as paralyzed then as he has seemed to be in this new round of uprisings — this may be serendipitous.

If I’ve learned anything from being a parent it’s this:  You can’t want it more than they do and the more you do for them the less they do for themselves.  If people in oppressed countries want freedom they have to be willing to die for it, to rebuild their country after the chaos of revolution, and to be responsible for whomever they choose to put in office.  Stability and/or freedom enforced and paid for by America is a tenuous stability that takes the onus off of the people seeking a better life and puts it squarely on American shoulders.  It creates a situation that we can’t win for losing. When America steps in the people begging for freedom tend to sit back and let us do the heavy lifting; criticizing and blaming us when things go wrong — and things will go wrong.

As Libya turns increasingly violent Mr. Obama should continue to champion freedom and democracy but let, in fact encourage, the Arab world to step-in to prevent any violence.  This is an inflection point: Islam is due for a revolution, an enlightenment, indeed a trip to modernity, but America can not force it, it has to come from within.

It’s American ingenuity — Facebook, Twitter, and Google — that have fed the freedom fires raging through the Middle East, not American policy. Egypt has a long way to go before it is a democracy and there is a real fear that Islamist will hijack the process, but for now, the Egyptian people are feeling the confidence and self-esteem that comes from doing something yourself.  They are tweeting away about a constitution and facebooking each other about the possibilities that freedom brings.

America is an exceptional country, and its exceptionalism is better off being emulated, not enforced.