George Will: Egypt Uprising Began When a Fruit Vendor in Tunisia Set Himself on Fire

George Will speaking on the uprising and tumult in Egypt as a member of the the Round Table on ABC’s This Week.

“It began when a 26-year old street vendor of fruit set himself on fire in a Tunisian city.  It wasn’t even in the Capital.  Now the next door neighbor Egypt is ablaze and who knows where it will go given the dry tinder over there.  There are 300 million people in the Arab world; 60% of them under 25; a quarter of those unemployed.”

Powder-keg?

I suppose he is right if this uprising was spurred on by or motivated at least in part by Egyptians seeing Tunisians taking to the streets to fight for a more responsive government.  That said, popular revolutions have always been linked and tied to one another so I guess one could make the argument that the American Revolution even played a role in this uprising.  Maybe even the French Revolution.  How about the Communist Revolution or the Islamic Revolution while we’re at it?

Tags: ABC, Egypt, fruit vendor set himself on fire, fruit vendor Tunisia, George Will, This week roundtable, uprising

This entry was posted on January 31, 2011 at 2:43 am and is filed under FOREIGN AFFAIRS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.