The Americans Are Trying Hard To Take Credit For The Arab Spring

First came the Gene Sharp affair, where supposedly an American philospher’s ideas strongly influenced the demonstrators in Egypt. That article was widely mocked by Arab bloggers and activists everywhere.

Now the New York Times (again) has an article about how some American NGOs and think tanks “trained” Arabs on using tools like Facebook and twitter to protest. I can’t think of anything that can be more insulting than that. The only credit the Americans deserve is for inventing Google, Facebook, wordpress and twitter, tools that if you’re motivated enough you can learn, master and teach on your own.