A thought on the Middle East

[rubrick]

As I've been reading about the events unfolding in the Arab world, something has struck me: When all is said and done, however many governments are toppled, whatever civil wars ensue, we'll be able to look back and say, with astonishing certainty, that one guy started it all. One unremarkable, unimportant, down-on-his-luck street vendor in Tunisia who decided to set himself on fire rather than suffer the indignity of the life he was living.

I don't think this is the way history usually works.