SHE ACTS LIKE THEY DIDN'T KNOW "STABILITY" WAS REPRESSIVE:

Change Is Good: The stability we have embraced and encouraged in the Arab world isn't really stability—it's repression (Anne Applebaum, Jan. 30, 2011, Slate)

In 1991, back when Ukraine was about to declare its independence from the Soviet Union, President George H.W. Bush made a declaration (this was the infamous "chicken Kiev" speech) in praise of the Soviet Union. For several years, he and his advisers ran around Eastern Europe and the Balkans doing duct-tape diplomacy, trying to piece a fracturing world back together again.

Politicians like stability. Bankers like stability. But the "stability" we have so long embraced in the Arab world wasn't really stability. It was repression. The benign dictators we have supported, or anyway tolerated—the Zine al-Abidine Ben Alis, the Hosni Mubaraks, the various kings and princes—have stayed in power by preventing economic development, clamping down on free speech, keeping tight control of education, and above all by stamping down hard on anything resembling civil society. Every year, more books are translated into Greek—a language spoken by 11 million people—than into Arabic, a language spoken by more than 220 million. Independent organizations of all kinds, from political parties and private businesses to women's groups and academic societies have been watched, harassed, or banned altogether.

The result: Egypt, like many Arab societies, has a wealthy and well-armed elite at the top and a fanatical and well-organized Islamic fundamentalist movement at the bottom. In between lies a large and unorganized body of people who have never participated in politics, whose business activities have been limited by corruption and nepotism, and whose access to the outside world has been hampered by stupid laws and suspicious bureaucrats.