In Awe and Anticipation

"Eighty-five million people live in Egypt, and less than 1,000 died in this revolution- and most of them killed by police," said one organizer in Cairo on 2/11/11.
As Roger Cohen writes on 2/14 in a New York Times OP-ED piece that 2/11 may be the most effective antidote to 9/11. Islamic radicalism has thrived not because of lack of U.S. authority and military might. Islamic radicalism has thrived because of lack of diversity (of every kind) and political courage to encourage diversity in the U.S. and abroad. Cohen writes of the unlikely encounters between two Egyptians- a young Westernized woman who returned to Egypt for the protests and a man of Muslim Brotherhood sympathies- on the streets of Cairo. "Right now Egypt has no president, no vice president. no constitution, no parliament and no significant police presence on the streets. But it has the meeting of generations between these two Egyptians; and it has a new sense of nationhood forged through countless other barrier-breaking discoveries of 18 shared revolutionary days."
Egypt is proving us wrong. Egypt is proving all of us wrong who believed that Islam was a simple, one-sided faith that was anti-Western and anti-Democracy. Egypt is proving all of us wrong who believed that young people are complacent. Egypt is proving all of us wrong who think grass-roots, non-traditional leadership will bring chaos and thus violence.
What has happened in Egypt will mark, I believe, this entire century. It is an answer to the deep need for peace in the world. If only people will listen. It is an answer to those on the right who try to pose Obama as sympathetic to terrorist groups. Now, with only Obama's firm and gentle words supporting the protesters, Egypt may become a greater force against terrorist groups than our years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq combined. Let this be a new day for religious and racial pluralism, and world peace.