President George W. Bush’s “freedom agenda” has run into the Middle Eastern sand. The president himself will be the last to recognise this. Speaking in the United Arab Emirates on January 13, he hailed a “great new era” of “the advance of freedom”. “My friends,” he proclaimed to the assembled sheikhs, “a future of liberty stands before you.” Then Mr Bush flew on to Egypt and lavished praise on President Hosni Mubarak, who threw into jail the last man to run against him for the presidency.