To Newsweek:
Niall Ferguson's article about revolutions was one of the worst I have ever read in your publication. Yes revolutions are a dirty business, but America's was not any more noble. Surely the British Empire represented tyranny, and the founding of the US led to many good things, but also the perpetuation of slavery, the butchering of Native Americans during Western Expansion, the gory Civil War, and Hiroshima.
Also, the US has opposed more revolutions than it supported. Business and political elites were horrified by socialist uprisings in Russia and China (the US military even sent troops to oppose the Bolsheviks, and Truman derided Mao as "Mousie Dung"), and preferred to heap praises on Hitler's leadership of post-WWI Germany. During the Cold War, we and our affiliates crushed leftist-nationalist movements in Congo, Central America, and Chile, resulting in years of repression and mass murder. We only supported revolts against the Soviets, even if they were conducted by likes of the Contras or Mujahadeen.
Current protests in the Middle East are not exclusively conducted by illiterates and Muslim extremists, as Ferguson intimates. Yes they are poor and jobless (not their fault), but many of them are college students, and some in Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood are from the upper class. This of course does not guarantee that future governments will be peaceful and cooperative with Western interests, but Ferguson should not assume that the result will be carnage just because it fits the Arab stereotype.
Ferguson poo-pooed Obama's 2009 Cairo speech as feeble and vague, but he should know that Obama did call for increased women's rights as well as political reforms. And he wasn't the only Western leader to embrace the "new Gaddafi." Does Ferguson seriously prefer Bush's neoconservative "democracy at gunpoint" approach that may have been well-meaning, but an utter failure in practice? His promotion of the "McCain strategy" is questionable as well. The 21st Century Middle East is not Cold War Eastern Europe. There are no viable pro-democracy social institutions and movements to back because the oil despots that the West tolerates/supports have violently quashed them. And to call for inciting conflict among Islamists as beneficial to US foreign policy is both preposterous and appalling, especially considering the Iran-Iraq War and more recent Iraqi sectarian bloodshed (in both of which the US played a negative role).
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