Slithering Smooth

Jay Nordlinger from the World Economic Forum on the Middle East:

The fourth and final panelist is one of my favorite Middle Easterners: Bassem I. Awadallah, of Jordan. When I encountered him last year, he was finance minister; now he is director of the king’s office.

His rhetoric here is noteworthy:

We must have political parties other than the government and radical Islam—people must have a choice, some space. Those must not be the two poles, in our societies.

True. Though, oddly enough, that's not how things played out a few months ago. The Egyptian regime clamped down on the liberals which allowed the Muslim Brotherhood to make significant gains in the legislature. So, now the regime can point to the Islamists and say to the West, "See, this is what happens when you ask for democracy. Isn't it better to keep on supporting us?"