Should Bush's chickens come home to roost or to crow?

On a Rocochet podcast about the uprising in Egypt, a listener asked whether the popular uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, and Yemen perhaps validate Bush’s view of the aspirations of the people in the Middle East. The answer is not necessarily Yes or No. Chris Matthews, of Hardball, who thinks the Panama Canal is in Egypt, says they show that overthrowing Saddam Hussein was unnecessary. Yes, and all that mess and fuss at Normandy was unnecessary, because, look!, eventually Berlin fell anyway.

There is a temptation to think that people protesting tyrannical governments are a democracy movement, of the sort that a popular post-Saddam regime in Iraq was supposed to model for the rest of the tyrannical, stinking, fly-specked dung heaps that make up Arab Islam. However, what the protesters are demanding are jobs and food. It may be that we are seeing the results of another Bush policy: mandatory gasohol. Diverting US corn from exports to domestic motor fuel has sent food prices soaring around the world, with resultant malnutrition, starvation, and lethal riots for two years.