Viewpoint: Nicholas D. Kristof

"On the roundabout [in the center of Bahrain’s capital, Manama] on Sunday, I met Ali, a 24-year-old on crutches, his legs swathed in bandages, limping painfully along. A policeman had fired on him from 15 feet away, he said, and he was still carrying 30 shotgun pellets that would eventually be removed when surgeons weren’t so busy with other injuries. Ali flinched each time he moved—but he said he would camp at the roundabout until democracy arrived, or die trying. In the 1700s, a similar kind of grit won independence for the United States from Britain. A democratic Arab world will be a flawed and messy place, just as a democratic America has been—but it’s still time to align ourselves with the democrats of the Arab world and not the George III’s."

Nicholas D. Kristof in The New York Times