Fisk’s latest bit has an interesting fifth paragraph—he claims that Hizbullah is encouraging erstwhile residents of the now flattened southern suburbs of Beirut to rent, not buy. Seems that someone’s thinking tactically here, and has decided that there’s no point in rebuilding quite yet.
Lebanon and Iraq are beginning to look like a giant fire sale, with Iran buying everything in sight, including the matches.
Saad Ibrahim’s op-ed in the Washington Post is worthwhile complimentary reading. Ibrahim points out quite rightly that the White House and its clients are simply being outplayed by the Islamists, and declines to say that this is a bad thing. Not only does he manage to write about the Middle East without getting democracy and electoral politics hopelessly tangled up (check out Fred Kaplan’s “What a moronic presidential press conference� in Slate), but he even uses the word “inimical.�
Kaplan meanwhile treats us to a classic bit of Bush fumble-mouthed idiocy, but is unfortunately disingenuous in his presentation. He claims that Bush is too stupid to understand that terrorism and “democracy” (which Kaplan unhappily conflates with electoral politics) can, and do, mix. Face it: Bush knows the difference between democracy and electoral politics (he’s made a career out of undermining the former with latter), and anybody who works with Karl Rove at home and “shock and awe” bombing campaigns in the great outdoors knows damn well how terrorism and electoral politicking go steel hand in velvet glove.
Unfortunately, Kaplan owns up to this in his last para, where he switches from his thesis (that Bush is a moron who can’t grasp the basic flaw in his own spin) to admitting that it is in fact Bush’s refusal to discuss, rather than his failure to understand, that is getting his goat. In the end it looks like Kaplan who doesn’t see the tree for the forest.
Seems apropos here, if late in the news cycle, to congratulate beleaguered Brit Deputy PM, Stetson wearing Big John Prescott, for his characterization of Bush’s handling of the Middle East: “crap.â€�
My comments on the Saad Eddin Ibrahim piece http://americanfootprints.com/drupal/node/2789“ rel=”nofollow”>here for those who are interested.
The first thing I thought when I heard of all those crisp hundred dollar bills was: who is printing the money, Iran or the Hizbullah? That might not be fair, but, it wouldn’t shock me. Where the heck would they get so many thousands’ of crispy clean new American cash?
Anyway. I’m a bit foggy on your opinion. What Bush said in that press conference (I am recalling, foggily, watching it) was that you can’t have a democracy in which some of the parties have armed wings loyal to them rather than the state. I’m no fan of Bush but this statement seems logical to me. Hamas may have “mobilized popular support”, but I remember reading about it also threatening opponents and anyone who criticized it, and the same for the Hizbullah. I don’t recall if I read about them actually killing opponents, or if I’m confusing that with something else, but that, too, would not surprise me. Surely you can’t be for that? Or do you feel (like I think prakitke said in his post) that it’s like a baby-steps sort of deal, where for now the parties have their own guns, but *eventually* their constituents will pursuade them to become drop the weapons and become normal political parties?
I wasn’t expressing an opinion on the questions you or praktike raise. What interests me about these pieces is the manner they use and confuse ideas and words and the consequences of this confusion.
My opinion, however, since you asked, is this:
In the context of the Middle East, where national borders have been drawn and redrawn over the last hundred years for the convenience of occupying armies (no, I’m not making some kind of veiled Israel reference), and where factions and foreigners have maintained themselves in position of state power by means illegitimate by any human, let along “democratic� standards, the claim that you “can’t have democracy in which some of the parties have armed wings loyal to them rather than the state…� is simply a plea—a blatantly, sickeningly, dishonest plea—for the right of might to impose its own kind of bloody handed peace and maintain it on behalf of “the state.�
Substitute “a state� for “democracy� and it’ll work fine, and we’ll be approaching a truth with which Bush and his Straussian cabal could genuinely agree.
Whether any of us personally “agrees with killing opponents� makes no difference to the fact that it’s something all kinds of governments, democratic, oligarchic or just plain stoopid (naming no names), do to acquire and maintain power. The Americans or the Israelies condemning Hamas or Hizbullah for wacking someone is like Clyde Barrow slapping some kid’s wrist for shoplifting.