Now Brit media is asking: Was Bush right After all?

[Seismic Anamoly]

Quote:

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you know Lebanon is a democracy already, don't you guys?

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Now why is that do you suppose???



West Germany was too.



But if the Great Satan's mere presence hadn't prevented Stalin's tanks from rolling over it 60 years ago, odds are it wouldn't have been...at least until 1990.



South Korea is now. But not because the North is timid of IT....the Great Satan might have something to say/do about/with it; the smart money says it does.



However, Reality is constantly denied by some.



And So It Goes.

[bitwhys]

Quote:

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Now why is that do you suppose???

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um



Syria

Edited by: bitwhys at: 3/9/05 13:39

[bitwhys]

What rise in freedom?

Quote:

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FREEDOM IS breaking out all over, so it seems. To hear supporters of George W. Bush, it's all due to the president's courageous decision to risk his presidency on the Iraq War.



Here's the storyline: Just as Bush's neoconservative advisers planned, ousting Saddam transformed not just Iraq but the balance of power in the Middle East. It gave ordinary Arabs and Muslims a sense of democratic possibility. Once Saddam went down, the other dominoes started falling.



Just read the headlines: Syria, respecting America's new muscle, is thrown off balance. Lebanon, long Syria's puppet, is demanding liberty. Egypt's despotic president (and US client) Hosni Mubarak is suddenly promising fair elections. Saudi Arabia's local elections are more authentic than usual. On the Palestine-Israel front, there's suddenly progress. Iran is negotiating about shutting down its nukes. And in Iraq itself, the process may be a mess but something real is happening.



Wow! If this picture is true, let's nominate George W. Bush for the Nobel Peace Prize.



The only trouble is, the picture isn't true.



For starters, each of these events has its own dynamics. The new Israel-Palestine reality reflects the death of Yasser Arafat and Ariel Sharon's decision to seize the moment, defy his party, and do a ''Nixon to China" by dismantling some Israeli settlements in Arab lands. This shift has nothing to do with Bush or Iraq. Indeed, the Bush administration has been less active in promoting a Palestine settlement than any in memory. (Watch out, when Fidel Castro finally dies and democracy comes to Cuba, Bush will take credit for that, too.)



Saudi Arabia remains a dictatorship and an intimate ally of the Bush administration. The prospect of genuine democracy breaking out there soon is laughable. Egypt, a place where the CIA sends highly sensitive prisoners to be tortured, is a similar story. If Iran is negotiating about its nuclear ambitions, it is thanks to European diplomacy and over US objections.



Lebanon's instability dates to the 1920s, when the French split it off from Syria as a Christian enclave. The French formula gave the Lebanese Christian Maronites power over what soon became a larger Muslim majority. The consequences: on-and-off civil war and Syrian protectorate of Muslims. Lebanon is reminiscent of other colonial legacies in places like Rwanda, Vietnam, India, and Iraq, where Western powers played brutal ethnic games of divide and rule. The United States has tried to intervene in Lebanon before and each time got its fingers burned.



What the whole Mideast region has in common is a sense of bottled-up popular grievances, many of them directed against the United States for propping up dictators that served American military and corporate interests (including, once, Saddam Hussein).



If genuine democracy breaks out, Bush might not like it. Al-Jazeera, the Arab world's mirror image of Fox News, is the closest thing to free Arab language media -- and the Bush administration keeps trying to strangle it. By the same token, the eventual government that emerges in Baghdad is not likely to be both genuinely democratic and pro-American.



But Bush is right that people everywhere want to be free. However, the fitful expansion of democracy has been more the fruit of local struggle and complex diplomacy than American military intervention. That's true of South Africa, where Bush's pals viewed Nelson Mandela as an untrustworthy Marxist; it's true of Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Taiwan, Korea, the Philippines, the Czech Republic, and the rest of the former Soviet empire.



Often, astute diplomacy and civil society initiatives work where invasions can't. The little-remembered Helsinki Process of the 1970s traded a US guarantee of no Western-sponsored ''regime change" in the Soviet bloc for Moscow's loosening of the screws. Civil society blossomed. American conservatives hated the deal. But before the Russians knew it, the Berlin Wall came down.



Bush is also right that democracy is contagious. As Hendrik Hertzberg wrote in The New Yorker after the Iraqis managed to hold an election, ''One can marvel at the power of the democratic idea. . . . Perhaps it can even survive the fervent embrace of George W. Bush."



So, rather than rejecting his odd embrace of universal freedom, let's hold Bush to his words. Let's have no double standards for despotic allies of convenience. Let's not manipulate other people's democracies behind the scenes. And if democracy is good enough for Iraqis, let's defend what Bush has not yet wrecked of democracy at home.



Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect. His column appears regularly in the Globe

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Bush is a sideshow carnival act

[DreamTone7]

"Bush is a sideshow carnival act"



There were many on this board who railed against the "act" while US troops went into Iraq...but if it were truly an "act", this wouldn't be necessary, would it. I don't mind an opposing opinion, but make up your mind, please. If Bush was truly just an "act", why rail against him at all?



...of course if you are able to admit that you are simply anti-Bush/American (like Mike), then just say so and be done with it. No need to try to adjust the focus of the camera to make what has turned out for the better (as many supposed it would) to appear wrong.

[bitwhys]

so I take it the latest republi-meme is "hating Bush" is old hat. well hate to be the one to break it to you but what Bush stands for is still and always will be anathema to many a civilized point of view. if you ever trip over your own border you just might realize that.



I don't hate Bush half as much as I love peace. What Bush did and is still doing in Iraq gives humanitarian intervention a bad name. Laying claim to the changes that are going on in the middle east (and wherever that leads) has nothing to do with Bush and everything to do with decades of struggle by and for the people who actually live there.



Equating Bush's conquest with any of the good that's going on is just plain dangerous. Luckily its only Americans and their beleagured media that are buying into any of it or trying to sell it. That and some right-wing internationals preaching to the converted.



History will record that Bush is an @#%$-clown searching desperately for something positive to call his own. These days he reminds me of King Canute, only instead of telling the tide to stop coming in he's commanding it to come in anyways and making believe its his idea.

[Seismic Anamoly]

And The Cow Jumped Over The Moon.



Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee....................

[DreamTone7]

"Equating Bush's conquest with any of the good that's going on is just plain dangerous."



The truth is always dangerous to those who ignore it when forming their opinions.

[bitwhys]

Quote:

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The truth is always dangerous to those who ignore it when forming their opinions.

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truth is once the billionaire got blown up Syria's troop were out of there no matter what W had to say on the matter. truth is even from a distance, Syria still owns Beirut.



that's the truth.

[DreamTone7]

Iraq did not hold their own elections the day after it was invaded...it took time. I think, in time, Syria will not longer "own" Lebanon. Then, that will be the truth.

[bitwhys]

not "own"



own



Syria seeks to keep Lebanese ties

Quote:

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The presence of 14,000 troops on Lebanese soil is the most overt symbol of Syria's influence over its neighbour.



Equally powerful and no less a source of resentment to some within the country are the economic ties linking the two countries.

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[RonOnGuitar]

Sorry, bitwhys, but frankly you'll just have to get used to the concept of democracy beginning to bud in the MidEast. The occupying dictatorship of Syria will be booted out. It may get bloody since dictators seldom relinquish power willingly. But a Lebanon run by Lebanese is obviously the better road.



And, yes bitwhys, like many people - both outside and inside the US - your view is colored by the addictive tunnelvision of Bush-hate and anti-Americanism. Those who see the big picture welcome this wave of democracy, no matter who provided it's impetus. Good news is good news.

[Galmin]

Quote:

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women should still be treated like dogs and forced to wear total body cover against their will, terrorists should be allowed to come and go as they please....the list goes on Ad Nauseam.

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Seismic, it seems you're mixing up pre war Iraq with pre war Afghanistan. It is a common mistake, it happens all the time on this BB (either because of pure ignorance, disinterrest in facts but an urge of protecting the president or just raw intellectual dishonesty). Either way, repeat what a religious dictator Saddam was oft enough and it becomes the truth, at least among people of the same sort.



Any Saddam 9/11 link yet? Any WMDs?

[DreamTone7]

"Any WMDs?"



Still don't think the Syrians have 'em, eh Galmin? The way I see it, the noose is slowly being tightened around the Syrian neck...ironically, mostly with their assistance. The US won't say anything publically (especially the way the rest of the world reacted to Iraq) unless they can offer proof...but I think the US government is pretty sure the Syrians have them...as is Israel, who does not cherish this idea at all.



Interesting how this not-so-remote possibility is missed by the media, considering the number of terrorist who turn out to be Syrians...while the inability to locate much WMD in Iraq made front-page news for months. In short, the media stinks to high-heaven as far as impartiality and accurate, meaningful reporting are concerned. Twenty years ago it was a different story. Ted Koppel would have done a peice most likely entitled "The Syrian Question", or something like that.



FRIENDLY words of advice for Galmin: Stop letting the media do your thinking for you!

[Galmin]

I can do my own thinking, thank you very much. Try it sometime.