Your government, your social institutions, your schools, and your economy are all in ruins.
Your young people are growing up illiterate, ill, and bent on rites of death and suicide, while you, in effect, are living on the kindness of foreigners, including America and the United Nations.
Every day your officials must beg for your daily bread, dependent on relief trucks that carry food and medicine into the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, while your criminal Muslim fundamentalist Hamas government continues to fan the flames of a war it can neither fight nor hope to win.
In other words, brothers, you are down, out, and alone in a burnt-out landscape that is shrinking by the day.
What kind of struggle is this? Is it worth waging at all?
More important, what kind of miserable future does it portend for your children, the fourth or fifth generation of the Arab worlds have-nots?
We, your Arab brothers, have moved on.
Those of us who have oil money are busy accumulating wealth and building housing, luxury developments, state-of-the-art universities and schools, and new highways and byways.
Those of us who share borders with Israel, such as Egypt and Jordan, have signed a peace treaty with it and are not going to war for you any time soon.
Those of us who are far away, in places like North Africa and Iraq, frankly could not care less about what happens to you.
Only Syria continues to feed your fantasies that someday it will join you in liberating Palestine, even though a huge chunk of its territory, the entire Golan Heights, was taken by Israel in 1967 and annexed.
The Syrians, my friends, will gladly fight down to the last Palestinian Arab.
Before you got stuck with this Hamas crowd, another cheating, conniving, leader of yours, Yasser Arafat, sold you a rotten bill of goods more pain, greater corruption, and millions stolen by his relatives while your children played in the sewers of Gaza.
The war is over. Why not let a new future begin? Many years ago, I gave a potentially very dangerous convert to Islam some sage advice. "Allah loves those that pray and live in peace, who raise their children with all the knowledge of the world they are able, who disregard slight and insult, and treat women with courtesy, in exactly the same ways as men should be treated, oppressing them not in the least." This I followed up by saying "Use your judgement. Look who Allah smiles upon in the world. The Moslem who fights, kills and dies against endless hated enemies, or the Moslem who lives a life of peace, knowledge and kindness?" I concluded with, "See how Allah even smiles more on the Christian, Jew, or even Atheist, who follow a path of peace, compared to the Moslem who follows the path of war, violence and the oppression of women and children."
"Do not listen to men who say Allah loves war. Look instead to the word of Allah made truth in the world. The world is the Koran, and the Koran is always right, in all times and all places. So live in peace, always--prosper and be beloved of Allah." Now damn, wasn't that poetic?
Don't usually agree with Friedman, but he does a good job describing the dwindling hope for democracy in ME
When you watch the violence unfolding in the Middle East today, it is easy to feel that you've been to this movie before and that you know how it ends badly. But we actually have not seen this movie before. Something new is unfolding, and we'd better understand it.
What we are seeing in Iraq, the Palestinian territories and Lebanon is an effort by Islamist parties to use elections to pursue their long-term aim of Islamizing the Arab-Muslim world. This is not a conflict about Palestinian or Lebanese prisoners in Israel. This is a power struggle within Lebanon, Palestine and Iraq over who will call the shots in their newly elected "democratic" governments and whether they will be real democracies.
The tiny militant wing of Hamas today is pulling all the strings of Palestinian politics, the Iranian-backed Hezbollah Shiite Islamic party is doing the same in Lebanon, even though it is a small minority in the cabinet, and so, too, are the Iranian-backed Shiite parties and militias in Iraq. They are not only showing who is boss inside each new democracy, but they are also competing with one another for regional influence.
As a result, the post-9/11 democracy experiment in the Arab-Muslim world is being hijacked. Yes, basically free and fair elections were held in Lebanon, the Palestinian territories and Iraq. Yes, millions turned out to vote because the people of the Arab-Muslim world really do want to shape their own futures.
But the roots of democracy are so shallow in these places, and the moderate majorities so weak and intimidated, that we are getting the worst of all worlds. We are getting Islamist parties who are elected to power, but who insist on maintaining their own private militias and refuse to assume all the responsibilities of a sovereign government. They refuse to let their governments have control over all weapons. They refuse to be accountable to international law (the Lebanese-Israeli border was ratified by the United Nations), and they refuse to submit to the principle that one party in the Cabinet cannot drag a whole country into war.
"Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinians all held democratic elections," said the Israeli political theorist Yaron Ezrahi, "and the Western expectation was that these elections would produce legitimate governments that had the power to control violence and would assume the burden of responsibility of governing. But what happened in all three places is that we (produced) governments which are sovereign only on paper, but not over a territory."
Then why do parties like Hamas and Hezbollah get elected? Often because they effectively run against the corruption of the old secular state-controlled parties, noted Ezrahi. But once these Islamists are in office they revert to serving their own factional interests, not those of the broad community.
Boutros Harb, a Christian Lebanese parliamentarian, said: "We must decide who has the right to make decisions on war and peace in Lebanon. Is that right reserved for the Lebanese people and its legal institutions, or is the choice in the hands of a small minority of Lebanese people?"
Ditto in the fledgling democracies of Palestine and Iraq. When cabinet ministers can maintain their own militias and act outside of state authority, said Ezrahi, you're left with a "meaningless exercise" in democracy/state building.
Why don't the silent majorities punish these elected Islamist parties for working against the real interests of their people? Because those who speak against Hamas or Hezbollah are either delegitimized as "American lackeys" or just murdered, like Rafiq Hariri, the former Lebanese prime minister.
The world needs to understand what is going on here: The little flowers of democracy that were planted in Lebanon, Iraq and the Palestinian territories are being crushed by the boots of Syrian-backed Islamist militias who are desperate to keep real democracy from taking hold in this region and Iranian-backed Islamist militias desperate to keep modernism from taking hold.
It may be the skeptics are right: Maybe democracy, while it is the most powerful form of legitimate government, simply can't be implemented everywhere. It certainly is never going to work in the Arab-Muslim world if the United States and Britain are alone in pushing it in Iraq, if Europe dithers on the fence, if the moderate Arabs cannot come together and make a fist, and if Islamist parties are allowed to sit in governments and be treated with respect while maintaining private armies.
The whole democracy experiment in the Arab-Muslim world is at stake here, and right now it's going up in smoke.
Posted by: Captain America ||
07/15/2006 14:40 ||
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#1
Mr. Friedman sure low-keys Iran in this column. Keller probably told him not to give W. any ideas.
#2
It's not a democracy or republic if the people don't control it by their votes. It's useless to go to the ballot box if, in the end, mobsters and gangsters control the government through terror tactis of murder, bribery, fraud etc.
I think one problem that these people have is that they are like the Europeans. They expect that if mobsters or gangsters or foreign agents take control of their government - that some mommy or daddy state is responsible for stepping in and making it all better.
Um, no. Democracy requires the people themselves to take action to preserve their government.
Besides - in Palestine - they voted for the government that would give them what they want - the destruction of Israel. And their government is attempting to give as promised. They got what they voted for.
And in Lebanon - well they are under seige by Iranian, Syrian and Hezbollah. They can't rid themselves of these elements by themselves. They need help - much like we needed the help of the French in our revolution.
But in the end - it is the responsibility of the people themselves - not some superpower, or global body - to keep control of their own government. That's why we maintain the right to bear arms. The forefathers understood that the people need protection FROM their governments and a means to dissolve and reform it if it doesn't perform. Often that means fighting. That's why we revere those who came before us and fought the battle for our freedom. Freedom isn't a guaranteed birth right - it's paid for in blood.
#3
They got their chance. If they blow it, they will suffer the consequences. Perhaps it will become a learning experience. If not, it can be repeated after rinsing.
#4
Hard to believe the Lebs can outdo the Paleos in the "Shining Pantheon of Cultural Stupidity", but we shall see....I prefer the explanation that most Lebs are moderate, want sovereign independence, but were outgunned by the Syrian/Iranian proxies...
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/15/2006 19:15 Comments ||
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ahhhh once again, Ein-El-Hellhole comes up. Perhaps the Hezbs and Iranians are using it as a base, Israel (*hint hint*wink wink*)
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/15/2006 19:26 Comments ||
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If Iraq had been an island, the "insurgency" would have been toes-up in six months. It is the extra-territorial financing, foreign fighter elements, and Iranian RG C-3 support that has made resolution of the low-level war in Iraq problematic. There won't be peace in Iraq until Syria and Iran have been brought to heel.
I strongly dislike Vietnam parallels with the present conflict, but the hands-off with Syria and Iran smack too much of the NVA sanctuaries in Laos and Cambodia.
Two words, Senator/Representative: Support Israel.
Their war is our war, and the sooner we realize that fact and help them dispatch medieval islamofascist vermin like Hamas, Hezbollah, the Assad regime, and the Iranian Mullahs to the hereafter, the better off we'll all be, including the Islamic world.
Well, okay, an accurate taxonomical evaluation of Assad might not include the "medieval islamo" part, but I believe that the rest fits and that his regime is the only exception in my list. Best not confuse the congresscritters.
Did you ever watch Hezbollah units parading in Beiruts Southern suburb and and making the fascist salute to Nasrallah? Well guess what happened to the guys wearing dynamite belts and holding cardboard RPGs? These mighty fighters were occulted by God overnight. They just vanished. Nobody knows where they are, but according to some rumors Beirut's sewers are experiencing a lot of demographic growth these days. But there's no need to worry, the resistance will be back. Once the last Israeli plane leave Lebanon, our courageous Hezbollah fighters will return to threaten the Lebanese who dare to question their policies.
The real tragedy is that theres only one Hezbollah thug killed until now; meanwhile 60 innocent civilians are lying on the ground. Israel cannot really get the Hezbollah so it is going for easiers target instead. These fanatics justified their existence by pretending that they defended Lebanon against Israel. They are now hiding behind (and under) the civilians they claim to defend. Whos defending whom exactly?
Go to hell Nasrallah, you and all your terrorists.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/15/2006 13:51 ||
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If you get a chance pop on over to Hot Air's latest Vent video where Michelle Malkin joins the Cindy Sheehan fast for a day. I think it'll be on all weekend.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
