Very nice simplication, basso! Anyway, I have always been a critic of this war because W lied to us about the justification of war and he lied to us about how much it would cost. Simultaneously, he angered long time allies while calling the UN irrelevant...you know...the same UN that we now actively ask for increased involvement. That being said, I hope some positives come out of this in the end and for the first time things are looking arguably better. But history will have to be the judge here. We'll have to look back in 20 years after we have the final body count, the final dollar amount and view how stabilized the region truely is. It is way too early to call this thing successful but it is refreshing to see a few positive things happening now.
Let's connect the dots: 1. Former Lebanon prime minister Rafik Hariri is killed 2. Syria is blamed 3. 70,000 Anti-Syrian Lebanese protest 4. Pro-Syrian PM steps down 5. President Bush makes his (self-serving) comments and demands Syria removed its troups and let Lebanon have free and fair elections 6. 500,000 Pro-Syrian (and Anti-USA) Lebanese protest 7. Ex Pro-Syrian PM now looks to be the next Lebanese PM GWB strikes again. You go George.
Oh there's more... U.S. Called Ready to See Hezbollah in Lebanon Role By STEVEN R. WEISMAN WASHINGTON, March 9 - After years of campaigning against Hezbollah, the radical Shiite Muslim party in Lebanon, as a terrorist pariah, the Bush administration is grudgingly going along with efforts by France and the United Nations to steer the party into the Lebanese political mainstream, administration officials say. The administration's shift was described by American, European and United Nations officials as a reluctant recognition that Hezbollah, besides having a militia and sponsoring attacks on Israelis, is an enormous political force in Lebanon that could block Western efforts to get Syria to withdraw its troops. On Tuesday, Hezbollah showed its clout by sponsoring one of the biggest demonstrations of recent Lebanese history, bringing hundreds of thousands of largely Shiite supporters into central Beirut to support the party's alliance with Syria and, by extension, the presence in Lebanon of 14,000 Syrian troops. Lebanon's political crisis deepened Wednesday when Parliament renominated the pro-Syrian prime minister nine days after he resigned under pressure from street demonstrations. If opposition leaders refuse to join his transitional government, tension over the rules for elections in May and the withdrawal of Syrian troops from the country will be high. [Related Article] The United States and France sponsored a United Nations Security Council resolution last year calling for Syrian troops to leave Lebanon, and a special United Nations envoy, Terje Roed Larsen, is to press for the troop withdrawal. Officially, Mr. Larsen's mission is also to demand the disarmament of Hezbollah, but as a practical matter that objective has receded, various officials say. "The main players are making Hezbollah a lower priority," said a diplomat who is closely tracking the negotiations. "There is a realization by France and the United States that if you tackle Hezbollah now, you array the Shiites against you. With elections coming in Lebanon, you don't want the entire Shiite community against you." The new posture of the administration was described by its officials, who asked not to be identified because of longstanding American antipathy toward Hezbollah. "Hezbollah has American blood on its hands," an administration official said, referring to such events as the truck bombing that killed more than 200 American marines in Beirut in 1983. "They are in the same category as Al Qaeda. The administration has an absolute aversion to admitting that Hezbollah has a role to play in Lebanon, but that is the path we're going down." Only a few weeks ago, the United States was tangling with France over Hezbollah's status, as France blocked an effort by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to have Europe formally label Hezbollah a terrorist group, restricting its fund-raising. Now the United States has basically accepted the French view, echoed by others in Europe, that with Hezbollah emerging as such a force in very fractured Lebanon, it is dangerous to antagonize it right now and wiser to encourage the party to run candidates in Lebanese elections. Hezbollah has military and political wings. While it has a militia of 20,000 troops and is also said by American and Western and Israeli intelligence agencies to funnel funds from Iran to anti-Israeli militant groups, it runs an array of social programs for Shiites. It also has 13 seats in Lebanon's Parliament and is aiming to expand its representation there in the May elections. European officials say the situation with Hezbollah is analogous to that of the Palestinian group Hamas, which has won local elections in Gaza and the West Bank and has come under pressure to moderate its views and negotiate with Israel. The United States and Europe formally label Hamas a terrorist organization. Especially since the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in Lebanon on Feb. 14, France has argued that Hezbollah ought to be encouraged to concentrate on politics. At the same time, President Jacques Chirac of France has supported President Bush's call for a Syrian troop withdrawal. "Our own language on this has been since Hariri's death not to go too far beating up on Hezbollah," a French official said. "It might hurt, and it won't help. We could be a turning point now, with Hezbollah maybe turning to politics and politics alone. The United States is no longer making a case of using this issue to disarm Hezbollah and brutally crush them." Many European officials and Arab diplomats say there has been a backlash in the region against the recent American attacks on Syria and demands for a Syrian troop withdrawal, particularly the administration's claim that anti-Syrian protests in Lebanon vindicate Mr. Bush's call for democracy in the Middle East. "Why don't they realize that once America makes a case for something, the Middle East will go in the opposite direction?" said an Arab diplomat, asking not to be identified as criticizing the administration. "Hezbollah is a terrorist organization, but now its hand is strengthened because of American opposition." The emerging position of Washington on Hezbollah has put it in an unaccustomed position of being at odds with Israel and its supporters, especially those who say Hezbollah is the single biggest threat to the fragile peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians. Israeli officials declined to comment on the latest development, noting only that Israel has not changed its belief that Hezbollah is a terrorist organization that must be disarmed. Under the 1990 accords that ended Lebanon's civil war, the country's many militias disarmed, but Hezbollah has remained, gaining nationwide respect because it was widely credited with forcing Israel's subsequent withdrawal from southern Lebanon On Tuesday, Hezbollah's leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, played that card at the Beirut rally, declaring that to force Syrian troops out would be to do the bidding of the United States and Israel. One question the United States must consider is whether keeping up pressure to get Syrian troops out in time for the elections could backfire by enhancing Hezbollah's appeal. Another is how to work with Europeans and Arabs to ensure that chaos does not follow a Syrian pullout. Although the Lebanese Army of 72,000 troops might be able to handle any instability after a pullout, the administration is also said to be considering other methods of keeping the lid on potential violence, like a multinational force. "The goal has to be to get Syrian troops out," said Edward P. Djerejian, a former ambassador to Syria and now director of the James A. Baker III Institute of Public Policy at Rice University in Houston. "But it has to be done in a manner that is not destabilizing to Lebanon. We don't want any unintended consequences here." Hezbollah, he said, "is an important political and paramilitary force in Lebanon that cannot be ignored." He said one possibility might be to expand the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, which numbers about 3,000. But diplomats say they have been informed that the United States does not want an expanded force under the United Nations. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/10/politics/10diplo.html
White House backtracks on Times story... ------------------------ White House Denies Change Toward Hezbollah By LIZ SIDOTI, Associated Press Writer MEXICO CITY - The Bush administration denied Thursday that it has softened its view of the Hezbollah political and militia movement in Lebanon as the Mideast country nears what could be its first open elections in decades. "Our view of Hezbollah has not changed," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites) told reporters en route to meetings in Mexico. "The goal in the near term is to make certain that the Lebanese people have a fair opportunity to have free elections and to determine their own political future," Rice said. Hezbollah is likely to play a major role in Lebanese elections scheduled for May. The United States has long listed the Iranian-founded, anti-Israeli Shiite Muslim group as a terrorist organization. "What we are focused on at this point is removing the artificial factor in Lebanese politics and that is Syrian forces and Syrian security personnel," Rice said. "The Syrian forces need to get out." Syria has had troops stationed on the land of its much smaller neighbor for nearly three decades, including during Lebanon's devastating civil war in the 1970s and 1970s. There is mounting international pressure, driven largely by the United States and France, to evict Syria now, nearly 15 years after the civil war ended. President Bush (news - web sites) has said that Syria must be out before the Lebanese elections in late May, and the United States and France jointly sponsored a United Nations (news - web sites) Security Council resolution calling for immediate withdrawal. A New York Times story Thursday said the Bush administration had reluctantly agreed to go along with efforts by France and the United Nations to nudge Hezbollah into mainstream, legitimate political life in Lebanon. "The report suggests that our view has changed on Hezbollah and it has not," White House press secretary Scott McClellan told reporters en route to Louisville, where Bush was speaking on Social Security (news - web sites). "It's wrong." Hezbollah demonstrated its political clout this week with an enormous pro-Syrian rally in Beirut. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm...&e=4&u=/ap/20050310/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_lebanon
Well nuke a gay unborn whale for Jesus ... Can Democracy Survive Bush's Embrace? LOOKOUT by Naomi Klein Can Democracy Survive Bush's Embrace? LOOKOUT by Naomi Klein Can Democracy Survive Bush's Embrace? I t started off as a joke and has now become vaguely serious: the idea that Bono might be named president of the World Bank. US Treasury Secretary John Snow recently described Bono as "a rock star of the development world," adding, "He's somebody I admire." The job will almost certainly go to a US citizen, one with even weaker credentials, like Paul Wolfowitz. But there is a reason Bono is so admired in the Administration that the White House might just choose an Irishman. As frontman of one of the world's most enduring rock brands, Bono talks to Republicans as they like to see themselves: not as administrators of a diminishing public sphere they despise but as CEOs of a powerful private corporation called America. "Brand USA is in trouble...it's a problem for business," Bono warned at the World Economic Forum in Davos. The solution is "to re-describe ourselves to a world that is unsure of our values." The Bush Administration wholeheartedly agrees, as evidenced by the orgy of redescription that now passes for American foreign policy. Faced with an Arab world enraged by its occupation of Iraq and its blind support for Israel, the US solution is not to change these brutal policies; it is, in the pseudo-academic language of corporate branding, to "change the story." Brand USA's latest story was launched on January 30, the day of the Iraqi elections, complete with a catchy tag line ("purple power"), instantly iconic imagery (purple fingers) and, of course, a new narrative about America's role in the world, helpfully told and retold by the White House's unofficial brand manager, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. "Iraq has been reframed from a story about Iraqi 'insurgents' trying to liberate their country from American occupiers and their Iraqi 'stooges' to a story of the overwhelming Iraqi majority trying to build a democracy, with U.S. help, against the wishes of Iraqi Baathist-fascists and jihadists." This new story is so contagious, we are told, that it has set off a domino effect akin to the fall of the Berlin wall and the collapse of Communism. (Although in the "Arabian Spring," the only wall in sight--Israel's apartheid wall--pointedly stays up.) As with all branding campaigns, the power is in the repetition, not in the details. Obvious non sequiturs (is Bush taking credit for Arafat's death?) and screeching hypocrisies (occupiers against occupation!) just mean it's time to tell the story again, only louder and more slowly, obnoxious tourist-style. Even so, with Bush now claiming that "Iran and other nations have an example in Iraq," it seems worth focusing at least briefly on the reality of the Iraqi example. The state of emergency was just renewed for its fifth month, and the United Iraqi Alliance, despite winning a clear majority, still can't form a government. The problem is not that Iraqis have lost faith in the democracy for which they risked their lives on January 30; it's that the electoral system imposed on them by Washington is profoundly undemocratic. Terrified at the prospect of an Iraq ruled by Iraqis, former chief US Envoy Paul Bremer designed elections that gave the US-friendly Kurds 27 percent of the seats in the National Assembly even though they make up as little as 15 percent of the population. And since the US-authored interim constitution requires an absurdly high majority for all major decisions, the Kurds now hold the country hostage. Their central demand is control over Kirkuk; if they get it, and then decide to separate, Iraqi Kurdistan will handily include the massive northern oilfields. Kurdish Iraqis have a legitimate claim to independence, as well as understandable fears of being ethnically targeted. But the US-Kurdish alliance has handed Washington a backdoor veto over Iraq's democracy. And with Kirkuk as part of Iraqi Kurdistan, if Iraq does break apart Washington will still end up with a dependent, oil-rich regime--even if it's somewhat smaller than the one originally envisioned. This type of bald colonial interference is already threatening to turn Lebanon's "cedar revolution" fairy tale into a nightmare. By all accounts, most Lebanese would like to see Syria withdraw from their country. But as the hundreds of thousands who participated in the March 8 pro-Hezbollah demonstration made clear, they are unwilling to have their desire for independence hijacked by the interests of Washington and Tel Aviv. By linking Lebanon's independence movements to American designs for the region, the Bush Administration is weakening Lebanon's secularists and religious moderates and increasing the power of Hezbollah. Which is precisely what Bremer did in Iraq: Whenever he needed a good news hit, he had his picture taken at a newly opened women's center, a trick that set the feminist movement back decades. (The centers are now mostly closed, and hundreds of secular Iraqis who worked with the coalition in local councils have been murdered.) The problem is not just guilt by association. It's also that the Bush definition of liberation robs democratic forces of their most potent tools. The only idea that has ever stood up to kings, tyrants and mullahs in the Middle East is the promise of economic justice, brought about through nationalist and socialist policies of agrarian reform and state control over oil. But there is no room for such ideas in the Bush narrative, in which free people are only free to choose so-called free trade. That leaves secularists with little to offer but empty talk of "human rights"--a weedy weapon against the powerful swords of ethnic glory and eternal salvation. George W. Bush likes to say that democracy has the power to defeat tyranny. He's right, and that's precisely why it is so very dangerous for history's most powerful emancipatory idea to be bundled into an empty marketing exercise. Allowing the Bush Administration to fold the liberation struggles of Lebanon, Egypt and Palestine into its own "story" is a gift to authoritarians and fundamentalists. Freedom and democracy need to be liberated from Bush's deadly embrace and returned to the movements of the Middle East that have been struggling for these goals for decades. They have a story of their own to finish.
Those Lebanonese political parties just keep on trying to top each other. http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/03/14/lebanon.syria/index.html
Biggest Anti-Syria Protest in Beirut today. Biggest Anti-Syria Protest in Beirut Danielle Hosri, Arab News — BEIRUT, 15 March 2005 — Over one million opposition backers chanted “Freedom, Sovereignty, Independence” and unfurled a huge Lebanese flag in central Beirut yesterday, throwing the biggest protest yet in the opposition’s duel of street rallies with supporters of Syria and the Lebanese government. Crowds of men, women and children flooded Martyrs’ Square, spilling over into nearby streets, while more from across the country packed roads into Beirut — responding to opposition calls to mark a month since the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. His slaying sparked a series of protests against Syria, the dominant power in Lebanon. “We are coming to liberate our country. We are coming to demand the truth,” said Fatma Trad, a veiled Sunni woman who traveled from the remote region of Dinniyeh in northern Lebanon to take part. The protest was heavily mixed, reflecting Lebanon’s religious diversity. Druse descended from the Chouf and Aley mountains east and southeast of Beirut and Christians arrived from the heartland in the northeast. There was a big turnout of Sunni Muslims, including many who bused into the capital from northern Lebanon’s Tripoli, Dinniyeh and Akkar regions, plus from Hariri’s hometown, Sidon, in southern Lebanon and Beirut itself. The protest, potentially the biggest in Lebanon’s history, easily exceeded the pro-government rally of some 500,000 held last week by Hezbollah. That show of strength forced the opposition to act to regain its momentum. Police officers privately estimated yesterday’s crowd at over one million people, but refused to speak publicly because of the sensitivity of the issue as it was an opposition rally. A long line of people in Martyrs’ Square carried a 100-meter white-and-red Lebanese flag with the distinct green cedar tree in the middle, shaking it and demanding Syria’s withdrawal. Another banner read “Syria out, no half measures,” apparently borrowing from US President George W. Bush’s “half measure” description of Syria’s gradual withdrawal. Many protesters waved Lebanese flags and released thousands of red and white balloons into the sky above the teeming crowd. Thousands wore the red and white scarves that have come to symbolize the country’s anti-Syrian movement, which the State Department has dubbed the “Cedar Revolution.” Brass bands playing patriotic and national folk songs and Lebanon’s national anthem were regularly drowned out by deafening chants from the crowd. Unlike the Hezbollah rally, there were no references to the West or the United States, which has been leading the international drive to get the Syrians out of Lebanon. Syria’s military withdrawal continued yesterday, with intelligence agents closing offices in the northern towns of Amyoun and Deir Ammar, on the coastal road between the port city of Tripoli and the Syrian border. Intelligence agents dismantled two checkpoints in the Akkar area. In all, more than 70 intelligence agents left — destination unknown, but believed to be northern Syria. Most intelligence offices, the widely resented arm through which Syria has controlled many aspects of Lebanese life, remained in northern and central Lebanon after Syrian troops moved east, closer to the Syrian border. Last week, intelligence officers left two central towns, Aley and Bhamdoun, and headed to the Syrian-controlled areas of eastern Lebanon. The redeployment is the first stage of what Damascus says will be a full withdrawal, though it has not given a timetable. http://www.arabnews.com/?page=4§ion=0&article=60483&d=15&m=3&y=2005
I wish those stupid Lebanese demonstrators would stop trying to show some fabricated connection between the actions of the Bush administration and the protests in Lebenon.
This could get bad. Lebanon is split right down the middle. I think we are all hoping for Syria to pull out. With leaders of the movement saying that Bush's actions have had some effect, then Bush gets some credit. But if he gets some of the 'credit' as well if this erupts into civil war. What really gets me is the way people want to give Bush credit for other actions (Egypt, Lybia, the Palestinian/Israeli situation) The worst is talking about democratic reform and mentioning the Palestinian situation. They had democratic elections back in '96 before Bush had even given a thought to the region. But they weren't shown to be an example of democracy in the middle east because Bush didn't like the outcome of that democracy(Arafat won). That is one of the problems. It doesn't count as democracy to some folks unless a guy that they like wins.
It doesn't count as democracy to some folks unless a guy that they like wins. Venezuela. Haiti. The beat goes on.
To be fair to GW Bush as governor of Texas I wouldn't have expected him to be formatting much of a foreign policy.
True, but as a person of wealth, and a priviledged background with an interest in politics, and possible eye on national office, I would expect him to have taken an interest in such things. I'm not even in office, and I'm aware that democratic elections had already taken place in the Palestinian territories.
You expected wrong. Or at least, you expected differently from Ken Lay, who was helpful in helping GWB formulate Texas foreign policy with regard to Uzbekistan. http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/bushlay12.html You may of course know Uzbekistan, one of our new allies in the War on Terror inter alia, from its charismatic leader & President for Life Islam Karimov - whose delightful policy of boiling political dissidents alive in oil is quaintly overlooked by the newly minted DEMOCRACY NOW! brigade of Bush supporters, as well as leveraged by the U.S. in its extraordinary rendition program in order to extract all sorts of worthless false confessions.
It's a ploy for the regional status quo. None of Iraq's neighbors want an independent Kurdistan, and their Constitution is loaded against it. Many of the Shia are deadset against a Republic since they are the majority. They're grumbling of the un-Democratic process and are plotting to shred up the Transitional Administrative Law once a government is set up. This gambit by America to control Iraq's destiny is very dishonest. The status quo in the region was to support strict dictators as long as we got what they wanted and none of the darker portions end up on the news. Slapping a Democracy label without stability to back it up makes me wonder what this effort is really for, the millions of oppressed people or the people footing the bill to this war and occupation.
