What's currently going on in the Arabic world is very promising - and exactly what George W. Bush has hoped for so much after the US attacked Iraq. Freedom is contagious. With one democratic country others will change as well. Widely known, this hasn't worked out. When has war brought peace and freedom the last time? World War II?
Now it were the Tunisian people ousting their autocratic president Ben Ali. Only few days later the people in Egypt start to demonstrate against their government - and so do the Yemenites.
Nothing says even one of the countries will end up as democracy. The riots might be quelled, other non-democratic forces might take over like fundamentalist Muslims or the military or the one autocrat might just be replaced by another. So far it's only a promise.
In some points freedom is like a virus: It can not live without a host. It's contagious and spreads from one host to the next. If the Jasmine Revolution does not succeed this time it might happen the next time at a different place. But by now it's already much more successful than any attempt to construct a democracy in Iraq and with far less casualties.
