Gadhafi's Fall Will Ripple Through Arab Spring

The fall of Moammar Gadhafi is demonstrating to people and regimes around the Middle East that even the most violent crackdowns cannot stop populations fed up with dictatorships and corruption—but even more important to the Arab Spring will be how Libya affects the uprisings in Syria, reports the Wall Street Journal. Yesterday in Syria, protestors started chanting "Gadhafi tonight, Bashar tomorrow." "Syria is very different from Libya, and for us, there are different scenarios, but what a boost to know that all scenarios lead to the end of the dictator," said a Syrian opposition activist.

The question is how much the momentum from those protests will spread around the region, to Iran, Yemen, Bahrain and other countries. Iran seems to have put down its Green Revolution, but unrest in Syria, its strongest ally in the region, could re-ignite protests in Tehran. "In recent months, people had started losing hope that they could achieve change," says an activist in Bahrain. "But if Gadhafi can be removed, this means democracy and popular revolutions can happen in the Arab world." (More Moammar Gadhafi stories.)