The View From Tahrir Square

How’s that Arab Spring doing now?

Remember Tahrir Square?

Remember the op-ed columnists who were camped out in central Cairo, breathing in the fumes of liberal democracy?

Remember the dupes who proclaimed the dawn of a new era in the Middle East?

Remember those who believed that the situation had been handled skillfully by our Obama-Clinton foreign policy team?

Remember how Tahrir Square inspired out own Occupy movement?

For those who let themselves be carried away in idealistic rapture, the news coming out of Tahrir Square today is not encouraging. Your mind may be filled with caring thoughts and feelings, but reality does not really care about your illusions.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting: “Security forces fired tear gas and clashed Monday with several thousand protesters in Cairo's Tahrir Square in the third straight day of violence that has killed at least 24 people and has turned into the most sustained challenge yet to the rule of Egypt's military.

“Throughout the day, young activists demanding the military to hand over power to a civilian government skirmished with black-clad police, hurling stones and firebombs and throwing back the tear-gas canisters being fired by police into the square, which was the epicenter of the protest movement that ousted President Hosni Mubarak in February.

“The night before saw an escalation of the fighting as police launched a heavy assault that tried and failed to clear protesters from the square. In a show of the ferocity of the assault, the death toll leaped from Sunday evening until Monday morning. A constant stream of injured protesters—bloodied from rubber bullets or overcome by gas—were brought into makeshift clinics set out on sidewalks around the square where volunteer doctors scrambled from patient to patient.”

All that’s missing is the op-ed columnists reporting first-hand on the glories of Tahrir Square. Don't hold your breath waiting to hear them say that they were duped.