Next month, the Arab Middle East will revolt

So says The Strategy Page and he's right.

Mark it on your calendar: Next month, the Arab Middle East will revolt.

However, generals with tanks and terrorists with fatwas won't be leading the revolution. This time, Arab moderates and liberal reformers -- the Middle East's genuine rebels -- are the insurgent vanguard.

Put a circle around Jan. 9. That's the day Palestinians go to the polls to elect a president. In the desperate, divided and terrorized Palestinian statelet, electoral politics (ballots) are replacing pistol politics (bullets). That is a revolution -- a worldview-shattering, history-creating revolution.

Draw another circle around Jan. 30. That's Iraq's first election day. Underline the two weeks prior to Jan. 30. That will be a savage fortnight in which terror campaigns and political campaigns collide. Democratic candidates will be assassinated and polling stations will be blown to bits, as Saddamite and Al Qaeda reactionaries -- the Middle East's ancien regime of tyrant and terrorist -- attempt to force an oppressed people to submit one more time to the yoke of fear.

And here is something I have been saying ever since Bush was reelected.

A successful Iraqi election following the Palestinian vote would make it a six-pack of electoral defeats for the twin evils of tyrant and terrorist. The other four? Australia returned pro-war-on-terror Prime Minister John Howard to power. In Afghanistan, voters braved Taliban terror to elect a president. In the United States, Bush won on the family value of protecting and projecting liberty. And people power thwarted thug attempts to steal Ukraine's presidential election, with a new vote set for Dec. 26.

I predict Blair will be reelected as well.
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