Fertilizer for the Plants of Democracy

Obama announces an economic package for the Middle East, which deals with the problem directly.

This statement is axiomatic: “It’s the economy, stupid.” Bill Clinton’s advisor James Carville made him take that statement to heart and gave Clinton’s presidency a direction. Now President Barack Obama is dusting off the statement and applying it to the Middle East. The Arab Spring was carried by the “lost generation,” the millions of young people in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Syria and Libya who remain stuck in the patronage systems of these countries, without a chance [for improvement].

Obama has now announced an economic package that will lend a hand to those countries that have survived the first birth pains of democracy.

The fragile, young plants of democracy must take root, but the region doesn’t have the money for irrigation or fertilization. There is talk of $2 billion and how the world economy could really use North African economic growth.

Osama bin Laden is gone, and the USA is slowly loosening its grip on Middle Eastern dictators; some of what Obama touched on in his historic June 4, 2009, speech in Cairo has become reality.