| Tyrone Slothrop |
03-16-2005 01:19 PM |
Wow.
Quote:
Originally posted by bilmore
"WASHINGTON (CSM) - Something remarkable is happening in the Middle East - a grass-roots movement against autocracy without any significant 'Great Satan' anti-American component. . . . The movements for democratic change in Egypt and Lebanon have happened since the successful Iraqi election on Jan. 30. And one can speculate on whether Iraq has served as a beacon for democratic change in the Middle East. During the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, President Bush said that 'a liberated Iraq can show the power of freedom to transform that vital region.' He may have had it right."
Daniel Schorr, NPR host, in Christian Science Monitor.
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- To Americans desperate for good news from abroad, the Beirut Spring is the apotheosis of a Middle Eastern perestroika. To the White House, and many American pundits, the crowds in Martyrs' Square have vindicated the Bush administration's invasion of Iraq. The image of Iraqis voting freely, so the narrative goes, struck a chord in other Arabs that finally gave them the courage to reach for the prize. NPR's Daniel Schorr argued that President Bush "may have had it right" when he said, "A liberated Iraq can show the power of freedom to transform that vital region." Dennis Ross, writing in the Financial Times, attributed Lebanon's uprising to the "Iraq effect." Washington Post columnist David Ignatius made the same point, citing Lebanese opposition leader Walid Jumblatt, who told Ignatius, "It's strange for me to say it, but this process of change has started because of the American invasion of Iraq. ... When I saw the Iraqi people voting three weeks ago, eight million of them, it was the start of a new Arab world." Jumblatt's quote caromed across the Internet, cropping up on numerous conservative blogs and in other columns. In The New York Times, David Brooks quoted Ignatius quoting Jumblatt and concluded, "People around the Arab world look at voters in Iraq and ask, 'Why not here?'"
There's just one problem. The idea that the Lebanese were inspired by the Iraq war doesn't have much currency in Beirut. "I've never heard it from anybody except Walid Jumblatt," laughs Jamil Mroue, editor-in-chief of Beirut's Daily Star newspaper. "I've heard the Lebanese say, 'What the heck, are [the Syrians] going to take us back to the Stone Age?' They're saying 'Fuck it, we're not going back. And, if it means demonstrating in the streets, and if it means changing the government, then so be it.' But I don't think they thought, 'Oh, the Iraqis voted, so we can, too.'" In actuality, some Lebanese have been struggling for reform for decades, hating their Syrian overlords. "Lebanon has been the only satellite state in the world since the end of the cold war, and no one lifted a finger," says Farid El-Khazen, a political science professor in Beirut. "It was business as usual until 9/11, and U.S.-Syria relations began to deteriorate. Internally, there was a movement all along that pushed for an end to the occupation. ... There is a linkage, if you like, with Iraq, in the sense that American policy has changed toward Syria due to their interference in Iraq. But [the Lebanese opposition] has been going on for a long time."
Because the Beirut Spring happened so soon after Iraq's election, and just as Hosni Mubarak said he would allow opposition parties to run for office in Egypt, the foreign press has linked the so-called Cedar Revolution to these other events. What has happened in Lebanon, however, is fundamentally different from events in other parts of the Middle East. Unlike other Arab states, Lebanon is not a dictatorship and never has been. It already has a civil society and a democratic infrastructure--the freest press in the region, a long history of relatively free elections, and a tradition of pluralism. D. Roman Kulchitsky, a political science professor at the American University in Beirut (AUB), says, "People here have been experimenting with democracy for a very long time. But there's always been so many external forces getting involved."
Indeed, for years, the United States was complicit in the Syrian occupation of Lebanon. After the 1989 Taif Accord, Syria became the main power broker in Lebanon, an arrangement accepted by the United States in the interests of "regional stability." At the same time, Washington invested relatively little in promoting liberalization in Lebanon: In 2003, the National Endowment for Democracy spent less than $700,000 on democracy promotion there; by comparison, the United States spent nearly $2 million on democracy promotion in the Ukraine. "The Lebanese not having a democracy was partly the American government's decision in supporting the Syrian hegemony over Lebanon," says Mroue.
Annia Ciezadlo, from Beirut, in The New Republic |
