In Changing Egypt, Where Will Faith Fall?

As I have struggled to make sense of the events playing out in Egypt, and more broadly in Tunisia, Bahrain, Yemen, Algeria, Libya and Iran, I have found myself returning repeatedly to The Irony of American History by the 20th century Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. In this classic, published in 1952 during the Cold War, Niebuhr writes that history is opaque, a drama whose meanings and ends are never unveiled to mere mortals. In the name of realism, Niebuhr criticizes two types of idealists: isolationists who insist that war is always morally wrong, and interventionists who insist on wielding American power without reckoning with the collateral damage.