Why the Arabs Slept

Kennedy, in his senior year thesis at Harvard, wrote “Why England Slept”.

Over 70 years hence, we’re wondering – “why the Arabs slept”.

The fractured Arab world is unravelling like the beads of a rosary…

One nation after the other is rising against their governments demanding – Change.

These learned Arab nations, of legendary cultures and knowledge in their past, with great wealth in the present, are in a state of complete chaos.

They have been, for years and years, ruled by leaders, who rule by the power of their supreme dictatorships and brutal leadership.

The Arabs have been drugged by the belief that their leaders are their heroes, who will protect their interests and care for their welfare, while in fact the dictators’ main objectives are to fill their coffers and exercise their unjust and repressive powers, leaving their people impoverished and powerless.

They – the people – had accepted their fate with a worrying silence and goodwill over decades and decades.  In other words, they have overlooked their leaders’ ruthless greed, ruling them with an iron fist – while they slept…

NO MORE…

The younger generation of the internet, Twitter, and Facebook refuse to accept what their forebears have endured, generation after generation…  They have woken up….

They are asking themselves: “why do our dictators feel that they are the only ones who could lead and rule our country?”  When each and every individual has the right to rule his country democratically.

Who, we ask ourselves, gave Bashar al-Assad (a western educated man, who should know better) and his Ba’ath Party, the delusional Gaddafi, the imperious Pharaoh Mubarak, or the corrupt and greedy now-ousted Tunisian President Ben Ali, the divine right to govern for twenty, thirty, or even forty years.

Why did the Arab people meekly accept to be ruled by men who knew how to empower and enrich themselves at their expense, and who put their trust into their corrupt and greedy hands…

Isn’t it abundantly clear for everyone to note that one after the other, so-called “leaders” suddenly start proclaiming ” ‘change and reform’ will be taking place immediately…”, only after their people rise against them… but why now?  And so urgently do they try to appease their people by bribing them with the change they should have implemented years and decades before…  The answer is, one word:

Guilt.

Guilty of corruption and repression.

Those dictators have had ample time to reform and improve the lives of their mostly poor and uneducated populations, whom they should have known, deserved better….  But instead, they choked their dignity, liberty, equality, and brotherhood.

“The young Arabs” have woken up.

They are demanding freedom from tyranny and rule by democracy.

Starting with Tunisia, followed by Egypt, Libya, Syria, etc., they demand liberty, equality, and their human rights – which is morally and legally theirs – not poverty and subservience to one man – their “leader”, their dictator.

It is their land.

It is their country.

Even if the Gaddafi’s or the Ba’athists of this world are temporarily winning the battle – it is the people, the young Arab nations that will, in the end – win the war.

The Arabs have awoken from their long sleep.

May democracy reign in the brave new world of…

“The Young Arabs”.

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