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March 11, 2005
Similar thinking on Leb Land
Phrased differently but similar analysis to my own:
Lebanon's Next Steps
By David Ignatius
Friday, March 11, 2005; Page A23
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A25613-2005Mar10.html
That's why the Bush administration must be very careful as it steers around the curve of history in the Middle East. President Bush's bully-pulpit speech this week about Arab democracy unfortunately pumped the gas so much it risked flooding the engine. It threatened to make the United States the issue, rather than the Lebanese people.
Or what I call self indulgent, self regarding rhetoric.
Some further points:
The Bush administration rightly wants to keep the focus on Syria -- and the demand that the Syrians withdraw their troops from Lebanon. To accomplish that, the White House needs to cool its rhetoric and keep its allies out front in pressuring Syrian President Bashar Assad to pull out. The lead negotiator with Assad will be U.N. representative Terje Roed-Larsen; that's as it should be. Behind him is a broad coalition that includes France, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other nations, in addition to the United States. That powerful alliance should deny the Syrians any port in the Lebanese storm.
Perhaps, but right, the generic face is better than Bush.
This week's events in Beirut and Damascus showed that the passage toward Arab democracy won't be a smooth, straight line of the sort Americans like but a complicated series of stops and starts, curlicues, smudges and ink blots. That is to say it will be written in the political language of the Middle East.
Or humanity.
The biggest challenge involves the Shiite militia, Hezbollah. If anyone had forgotten that this was crucial, they got a noisy reminder Tuesday when the group's leader, Hasan Nasrallah, pulled 500,000 of his followers into the streets of Beirut. Calling it a "pro-Syria" rally was a misnomer; this was a pro-Hezbollah demonstration -- a statement that Nasrallah has the ability to sabotage the democracy movement if he chooses.
A nice lesson for the know nothings out there blithering on about Syria and Hizbullah.
The remainder of the article/op ed is not bad. Ignatius, while sometimes a bit of a sucker for the smooth talkers, is a good observer and I liked hims comments on Elmer Fudd back when he rapped with him.
Posted by The Lounsbury at March 11, 2005 03:07 PM
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Jan-July 2005
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