“When the American people ate black bread, George Washington ate black bread with them,” declares 39-year old Kurmanbek, moments before he joined in a crowd of thousands to sack the presidential compound in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. “We want leaders who eat black bread too. I want Kyrgyzstan to become the fifty-first state.”

But this mountainous central Asian country, surrounded on all sides by varying degrees of dictatorship, has a long and difficult road to travel before it joins George W. Bush’s vaunted “global march to freedom.” For the moment, it’s not even clear that the country is lacing up its walking shoes.