ALL OF THE ADMINISTRATION'S SUCCESS COMES WHEN IT APES W:

Events in Tunisia bear out Hillary Clinton's warning to Arab world: The president of Tunisia, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, flees the country amid unrest one day after US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton issued a warning to Arab states that refuse democratic reforms. (Howard LaFranchi, 1/14/11, CS Monitor)

Clinton’s words on Thursday echoed the often even-tougher views of US officials behind the scenes who say that, while some progress is being made in some Arab countries – for example in expanding civil society – democratic reforms and anticorruption steps are lagging and fomenting what could be a wave of instability.

“Those who cling to the status quo may be able to hold back the full impact of their countries’ problems for a little while, but not forever,” Clinton said. Those words turned out to be prophetic for Tunisia’s Ben Ali, but they were interpreted by a number of regional specialists as particularly applicable to Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak – a staunch friend of the US but an octogenarian who has ruled for almost 30 years.