[lit-ideas] The Bush Doctrine’s Next Test
- From: Brian <cabrian@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 18 May 2005 16:37:39 -0500
Excerpt:
The mere fact that the terrorists of Hizballah have now found
themselves outnumbered in an open tug-of-war with popular dissidents,
and in the humiliating position of publicly supporting the foreign
occupation of their own country, is as good an indicator as any of
the dizzying pace of change in the post-Saddam Hussein Middle East.
The successful elections in Afghanistan in October 2004; the January
30 voting in Iraq; the Palestinian election of Mahmoud Abbas
following the ostracism and death of Yasir Arafat; the grassroots
furor in Lebanon?all these have created a perfect storm of sorts for
Arab and Muslim strongmen. In fear both of American wrath and of
their own disenfranchised masses, most of the jittery autocrats in
the region are now scrambling to repackage themselves as, at the very
least, parliamentarians in disguise. Facing a canceled visit from
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Hosni Mubarak, Egypt?s president
for life, went so far as to promise multiparty elections later this
year. Even the Gulf sheikdoms have spoken of municipal voting that
could theoretically include women.
Western political elites have similarly been caught off-guard by this
turn of events, so threatening to their settled conviction that the
situation in the region has gotten worse, not better, in the
aftermath of the controversial, American-led invasion of Iraq. Only a
year ago, Dana Milbank and Robin Wright were writing in the
Washington Post that ?President Bush took the nation to war in Iraq
with a grand vision for change in the Middle East and beyond. . . .
Things have not worked out that way, for the most part.? But a year
later, the Post?s Jackson Diehl, a longtime critic of the
administration, was suddenly upbeat: ?Arabs are marching for freedom
and shouting slogans against tyrants in the streets of Beirut and
Cairo?and regimes that have endured for decades are visibly
tottering. Those who claimed that U.S. intervention could never
produce such events have reason to reconsider.?
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/article.asp?aid=11905023_1
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