KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON FREE

Of course, there’s nothing new about explosions of hostility to the United States in the Arab world what’s new is how far they’re allowed to go. One of those poisons, of course, is anti-Americanism. In the mean time, however, freedom releases poisons as well as noble aspirations. Bush was right when he said, in his second Inaugural Address, that 'the survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands' - or at least he would have been right if he had said something less resonant, like 'our security depends on legitimate government in the Islamic world.' In the long term, good for them is good for us. I have always assumed that a more democratic Middle East would be good for the United States in the long run, but bad in the short run. The tumult offered a forceful reminder that 'good for us' is not the same as 'good for them.' But for Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, and Yemen - the countries where citizens overthrew those hated rulers - the demonstrations were a sideshow, if a mortifying one. diplomatic outposts in the Middle East have left many Americans feeling that the neighborhood was a lot safer when it was patrolled by pro-American generalissimos. The other day I was on a talk show where the host asked me, 'Are we better off now than we were before the Arab Spring?' And I said, 'Who is we?' The furious attacks on U.S.

KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON FREE

One quarter of the seats in Egypt's genuinely free parliamentary elections this past January went to Salafists with an explicitly Islamist agenda, and Morsy cannot ignore them as Mubarak ignored the more moderate Islamists in his own parliament. The new government of President Mohammed Morsy, however, not only lacks the fine mechanisms of control available to Mubarak, but cannot afford to side with Washington against an outraged populace, as a dictator could. President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt was always prepared to stoke popular anger at Israel or even the United States, but his thugs would have broken up a demonstration long before it threatened the U.S. Of course, there's nothing new about explosions of hostility to the United States in the Arab world what's new is how far they're allowed to go.

Keep calm and carry on