Mr. bin Laden may have thought that by toppling only the top floors of the towers, the United States would do no more than "lob one or two Tomahawks at him," Professor Ajami said.
Mr. Arron's party was part of a coalition that won elections in 1977, only to be toppled by a coup led by Sgt. Desi Bouterse in 1980.
Speaking to the Guardian via Skype, at one point above the sound of shelling, she said: "People here believe that the Syrian regime will only be toppled by force, because they use force so you need to use force against it".
One has seen grand theories rise, only to be toppled by stubborn facts.
Juan Bosch, a prolific writer who in December 1962 became the first freely elected president of the Dominican Republic in 38 years -- only to be toppled by a military coup after seven months in office -- died yesterday in the capital, Santo Domingo.
Mauritania is the only Arab country after September 11th that managed to hold a free and fair election (save for Lebanon, depending on your definition of "free and fair"), electing a president without a military invasion in 2007, only to be toppled by a coup a year later.
Bahrain's royal family is unlikely to topple, if only because the Sunnis who rule Saudi Arabia will not tolerate their neighbor being run by a Shiite-led government.
I did not, however, spend the bulk of my adult life perfecting the fine art of establishing boundaries only to have them toppled by the click of a mouse.
There is only one precedent for an oil-funded autocrat in the Middle East being toppled by a people's revolution, not by a military coup, and that was in... Iran.
Spurling can't adequately support her most ambitious claim: that the Humbert affair nearly toppled the Third Republic and was contained only by stringent damage control on the part of government officials implicated in the scandal.
