Get it together, NPR!

Yesterday NPR had a story putatively on Arab economic and political problems. While the Arab commentators agreed there were problems, I heard nothing about pursuing economic development along East Asian lines, only complaints about the lack of stability in the Mideast. (What about the lack of stability in Taiwan & South Korea?) In an interview during the same program, Fareed Zakaria praised China's development despite its lack of democracy. So why can't the Arabs follow the East Asian model? Elsewhere Zakaria argues that in Middle Eastern countries, "Socialism produced bureaucracy and stagnation. Rather than adjusting to the failures of central planning, the economies never really moved on."