Is the World listening?

Meanwhile in Cairo, Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak, who succeeded the assassinated Anwar Sadat in 1981 and has periodically won sham elections ever since, made a "dramatic decision to allow a competitive presidential election," which "comes amid a behind-the-scenes struggle by the Bush administration and Congress to require Cairo to spend part of its annual $2 billion in U.S. aid on political and economic reform," the Los Angeles Times reports:

"Officials said they did not believe that U.S. pressure alone forced Mubarak's hand. "U.S. pressure was certainly material," said an official who spoke on condition of anonymity. "But [Mubarak's] people are sitting watching TV. You've seen free elections in Palestine, free elections in Iraq, hundreds of thousands of people demonstrating on the streets in Lebanon, illegitimate elections overturned in Georgia, illegitimate elections being overturned in Ukraine. . . . It's a combination of all these things."

Those who thought Arab democracy was a hopeless cause are looking more and more naive.