Please MC let me see you face to face next time you are in Cairo

“Single-party ruling elites that have been in power for three to four decades…” which took over from what? Democracies characterized by strong institutions, balanced power sharing and multiple, mature political parties? According to Khoury, who says that these wretched governments are undermining political systems and social orders held over from the 1920s, “Parliaments, political parties, elections and most civil society and non-governmental organizations have all suffered…”

Couldn’t agree more that the Mubarak crowd or the Assad crowd (or whichever other kleptocratic crowd of semi-literate bumpkins he’s talking about) have been a terrible burden on the region, but he makes it sound like the Middle East is a splinter state, created after WWII by the division of Finland and relocated to a blank spot on the map between Turkey and Africa. Come on: Egypt’s been run by despots through their security forces since… well, I dunno, when wasn’t it? And what’s more, like Mubarak, they’ve been foreign-backed more often than not since Alexander left that Ptolemy guy in charge.

These aren’t societies to which the heavy-handed attentions of village policeman raised up to the status of security thugs by village bigmen, themselves raised up to the status of colonial satraps, is foreign. Far from it. Might not be good. Might not be nice. But to suggest that the last 50 years of Middle East history has been a downhill slide from some kind of state of institutional grace is at best silly, and at worst indicative of some kind of weird colonial nostalgia.