According to one source:
(AP) TUNIS, Tunisia – After 23 years of iron-fisted rule, the president of Tunisia was driven from power Friday by violent protests over soaring unemployment and corruption. Virtually unprecedented in modern Arab history, the populist uprising sent an ominous message to authoritarian governments that dominate the region.
Well, Americans are once again welcoming a supposedly anti-despotic revolution in the Middle East. I do of course hope for the Tunisians to secure the blessings of liberty to themselves and their posterity, but unlike the the reporter above, I have some knowledge of such precedents for this event as the Shah's ouster and the Moroccans revolution against the French. None of these produced a one-man one-vote system of anything, and so, to judge from experience, even after this coup, Tunisia may well be in for more of the depressing same.
Certainly the Tunisians are not demonstrating enough love of freedom to inspire hope. They did not fight long or hard to remove their despot. They do not seem to have established militias or a secondary government. Instead, they just seem to have rioted in order to drive out a very driveable old man. Worse though, they did not fight to end over-government but to establish a government strong enough to control the economy and create jobs. In light of this apparent unconcern for their liberties then, the Tunisians are unlikely to make the many daily sacrifices necessary to maintain them, and their future government may well therefore be another unelected weight upon their lives. In fact, given their stated goals, a tyrant promising jobs, land and bread may find himself not simply unopposed but welcomed. Certainly current authorities are facing no real opposition:
(http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AF_TUNISIA_RIOTS?SITE=NMALJ&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT), "plainclothes police were seen hustling some people off the streets of Tunis, which was under curfew. One was clubbed, another was dragged on the ground."
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