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Thread: great article

  1. #1
    Master OptiBoarder chm2023's Avatar
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    great article

    If you have the chance, catch Friedman's column in the Times today. Very interesting I thought. ("Kidnapping of Democracy")

  2. #2
    Master OptiBoarder rep's Avatar
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    kinda tough

    to read a great article when you dont post a link or reveal which "Times" you are referencing.

    Rep

  3. #3
    Master OptiBoarder rinselberg's Avatar
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    New York Times - only way that the word "Times" translates when you're talking "Blue State" ...

    The online article is only available by paid subscription.

    OP-ED COLUMNIST
    The Kidnapping of Democracy
    By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
    Published: July 14, 2006

    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.

    To continue reading this article, you must be a subscriber to TimesSelect.

    Are you reading more posts and enjoying it less? Make RadioFreeRinsel your next Internet port of call ...

  4. #4
    Master OptiBoarder chm2023's Avatar
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    This usually doesn't work, but let's give it a go. (Friedman is a NYT columnist. Who doesn't know this?)


    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.
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    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 U.N.), 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 Mr. 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 Mr. 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 U.S. 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.

  5. #5
    OptiWizard ksquared's Avatar
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    Thanks for posting the article Chum2023. Not all of us are NYT subscribers. Here's another article that approaches the current situation from a slightly different perspective.

    Battle Plans By Yossi Klein Halevi

    JERUSALEM - The next Middle East war - Israel against genocidal Islamism - has begun.

    The first stage of the war started two weeks ago, with the Israeli incursion into Gaza in response to the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier and the ongoing shelling of Israeli towns and kibbutzim; now, with Hezbollah's latest attack, the war has spread to southern Lebanon. Ultimately, though, Israel's antagonists won't be Hamas and Hezbollah but their patrons, Iran and Syria. The war will go on for months, perhaps several years. There may be lulls in the fighting, perhaps even temporary agreements and prisoner exchanges. But those periods of calm will be mere respites.

    The goals of the war should be the destruction of the Hamas regime and the dismantling of the Hezbollah infrastructure in southern Lebanon. Israel cannot coexist with Iranian proxies pressing in on its borders. In particular, allowing Hamas to remain in power — and to run the Palestinian educational system — will mean the end of hopes for Arab-Israeli reconciliation not only in this generation but in the next one too.

    For the Israeli right, this is the moment of "We told you so." The fact that the kidnappings and missile attacks have come from southern Lebanon and Gaza — precisely the areas from which Israel has unilaterally withdrawn — is proof, for right-wingers, of the bankruptcy of unilateralism. Yet the right has always misunderstood the meaning of unilateral withdrawal. Those of us who have supported unilateralism didn't expect a quiet border in return for our withdrawal but simply the creation of a border from which we could more vigorously defend ourselves, with greater domestic consensus and international understanding. The anticipated outcome, then, wasn't an illusory peace but a more effective way to fight the war. The question wasn't whether Hamas or Hezbollah would forswear aggression but whether Israel would act with appropriate vigor to their continued aggression.

    So it wasn't the rocket attacks that were a blow to the unilateralist camp, but rather Israel's tepid responses to those attacks. If unilateralists made a mistake, it was in believing our political leaders — including Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert — when they promised a policy of zero tolerance against any attacks emanating from Gaza after Israel's withdrawal. That policy was not implemented — until two weeks ago. Now, belatedly, the Olmert government is trying to regain something of its lost credibility, and that is the real meaning of this initial phase of the war, both in Gaza and in Lebanon.

    Still, many in Israel believe that, even now, the government is acting with excessive restraint. One centrist friend of mine, an Olmert voter, said to me, "If we had assassinated [Hamas leader] Haniyeh after the first kidnapping, [Hezbollah leader] Nasrallah would have thought twice about ordering another kidnapping." Israel, then, isn't paying for the failure of unilateral withdrawal, but for the failure to fulfill its promise to seriously respond to provocations after withdrawal.

    Absurdly, despite Israel's withdrawal to the international borders with Lebanon and Gaza, much of the international community still sees the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers as a legitimate act of war: Just as Israel holds Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners, so Hamas and Hezbollah now hold Israeli prisoners. One difference, though, is that inmates in Israeli jails receive visits from family and Red Cross representatives, while Israeli prisoners in Gaza and Lebanon disappear into oblivion. Like Israeli pilot Ron Arad, who was captured by Hezbollah 20 years ago, then sold to Iran, and whose fate has never been determined. That is one reason why Israelis are so maddened by the kidnapping of their soldiers.

    Another reason is the nature of the crimes committed by the prisoners whose release is being demanded by Hezbollah and Hamas. One of them is Samir Kuntar, a PLO terrorist who in 1979 broke into an apartment in the northern Israeli town of Nahariya, took a father and child hostage, and smashed the child's head against a rock. In the Palestinian Authority, Kuntar is considered a hero, a role model for Palestinian children.

    The ultimate threat, though, isn't Hezbollah or Hamas but Iran. And as Iran draws closer to nuclear capability — which the Israeli intelligence community believes could happen this year — an Israeli-Iranian showdown becomes increasingly likely. According to a very senior military source with whom I've spoken, Israel is still hoping that an international effort will stop a nuclear Iran; if that fails, then Israel is hoping for an American attack. But if the Bush administration is too weakened to take on Iran, then, as a last resort, Israel will have to act unilaterally. And, added the source, Israel has the operational capability to do so.

    For Israelis, that is the worst scenario of all. Except, of course, the scenario of nuclear weapons in the hands of the patron state of Hezbollah and Hamas.

    Debt Crisis 2011: All the ostensible nobility in the world notwithstanding, we have run out of other people's money to spend.

  6. #6
    Master OptiBoarder chm2023's Avatar
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    Interesting read K. I think Israel may be sowing the seeds of Lebanon's collapse as a democracy. The $64000 question of course if, what choice did they have? In the past, the US had the muscle to mandate a seize fire. These days, we unfortunately have no leverage with Syria or Iran, and precious little with the other major players in the region, W having elected to abandon traditional diplomacy. I suspect W is hoping Israel will kill off as many Hezbollah as possible. That should cool things down, don't ya think?

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