To the shores of Tripoli

I have been as critical as just about anyone of W's eight years in office... of Cheney's/Haliburton's profiteering in Iraq... of the CIA's lies about weapons of mass destruction... of the American lives and treasure expended in a two-front War on Terror.

And yet... in 2003 or 2004 President Bush made a speech (maybe more than one) in which he predicted the spread of democracy in the Middle East and North Africa, as a result of the ouster of Hussein.

Today, rebels are in Tripoli and Libya's dictator of three decades is in hiding and on the run. In Cairo, Egypt's dictator of about as many years is in a cage in a courtroom on trial for his crimes against his people.

Should the Arab Spring really result in a summer season of democracy in that most autocratic of world regions, the debate no doubt will rage for as many decades, about whether the American incursions in Afghanistan and Iraq were the catalysts of such momentous changes.

This debate, which most certainly will come, will be reminiscent of a similar controversy over the role that Ronald Reagan and Star Wars played in bringing down the Evil Empire, which proved to be a house of cards. I personally have always believed that Reagan, whatever else he was or wasn't, possessed the vision of a sort of idiot savant when it came to Communism. No deep thinker or great intellectual, he knew in his guts that the Soviet Union was indeed evil and not to be compromised with, and that it was rotten and could be brought down. Was it worth the money expended on Star Wars? Was it worth the unprecedented debt that Reagan ran up?

I think most of us in America, and perhaps in the Free World (which now includes Eastern Europe), would say that it was.

I was a fan of Reagan... voted for him twice. So it's been easy for me to harbor my prejudice for him and his possible achievements. I despised Bush. So it is less easy to suggest here that he, too, may have been right in his contrarian reading of an historic opportunity. If he was right about the potential for democracy in the Middle East and North Africa --- and a lot more water must flow over the dam before we know that --- was it worth the new high in the national debt that we now shoulder?

A good question, I think. And, again, one that will only be answered with the passage of time.

More on the Reagan and Bush presidencies here: