Egypt and the Freedom Agenda

As I watch the events in Egypt, I--like many others--have been thinking about George Bush and his Freedom Agenda for the Middle East.  I was always struck by the ambition and scope of Bush's thinking on the subject of freedom in the Middle East, and I secretly (and sometimes not so secretly) cheered him on in his rhetoric.  But all the time, an inner pragmatist kept perking up inside my brain saying "yes, they may want freedom, but an awful lot of them want freedom to pick fundamentalism".  In the end, this horrifying thought kept me from being more than a half-hearted supporter of the Freedom Agenda.

And now, we see Mubarak falling, as Bush and the Freedom Agenda crowd knew he would.  What will replace him?  We see a moderate, secular veneer in the protesting crowds--but is it what will fill the power vacuum, or will it be the Muslim Brotherhood, the only opposition to Mubarak with any organization to speak of, pieced together under the boot of a police state.

Only time will tell, but I don't like where this could go.  Elliott Abrahms writes on the subject this morning, perhaps a bit too enthusiastically for my taste.