One of the great mistakes too many in the US and the West make is that they too often assume that Middle Easterners think the same way Westerners, especially Americans, do. Their framework is profoundly different from ours: they have grown up in a completely different environment, with different upbringing, different culture, different religion, different peer and societal pressures, different goals and motivations and so on. To assume that they would have these same desires and come to the same conclusions as we would and want the same government as us is dangerous and foolish. I mean no insult when I say this, though it will be insulting anyway, but until we understand that the Arab world (and Egypt is part of it have no doubt) does NOT have the same level of education, freedom of thought, and belief in liberal/secular government and society we will continue to blunder in our dealings with the Arab (and Islamic) world. Every time we make that assumption, it has come back to bite us in the rear. While the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan are necessary and moral, many of the difficulties we have experienced there are because of our incorrect and Western-centric assumptions. To judge the happenings from a Western perspective and set of assumptions is guaranteed to cause catastrophic misunderstandings and misinterpretations.
I desperately hope that the Egyptians choose the right path, not just for them, but for the world in general. Another Islamist powerhouse in the region would not only be a tragedy, but a catastrophe. However, unless we understand the people in and of themselves, instead of projecting our own framework onto them, we are going to blunder yet again and turn the potential for positive change into utter disaster.
