Oh my. Some random internet blogger said it! it must be true[/quote]
…and the Washington Post editorialist taking his statement at face value is more reliable?
Anyway, I’m all for 'em. Just not buying correlation=causation + opposition leader who needs Western support says what you want. Dig up a cross-section of guys off the street saying it’s because of Iraq and I’ll start listening.
Yeah! And I think that’s the best thing about this. Before, with a handful of protesters, you could say with a straight face that the protesters were an odd band who were probably rallied together by Americans and Zionists (well, if you’re the sort of person who uses the word “Zionist” with a straight face, that is).
Now… BWAHAHAHAHAH!!!
Hezbollah == pwn3d.[/quote]
Did you guys ignore the part that said that the Hezbollah got half a million men and women to march against a Syrian retreat?
I’m happy that they got outmatched, but it’s hardly a crushing defeat for them when they’ve got that kind of support among the Lebanese population.
Because it’s not like Lebanon is a fractious country given to civil war…
If anything, these counterdemonstrations just go to show how messy a post-Syrian power vaccum is going to be. Just in case, you know, you aren’t paying attention to what’s going on in Iraq.
-Tom
Not a random internet blogger…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3284681.stm
Hm, “a virus”… yeah, he validating your preconceived notions so you definitely want to trust this guy.
You know, you’d think that the “Mission Accomplished!” stupidity would have taught some people a lesson. But hey, keep up with the gloating! I can’t wait for the self-congratulatory explosion by the neocon supporters here if an actual government is formed in Iraq.
And this raving over the Lebanese situation being due to what the US is doing in Iraq is insane. If you’ve been paying attention, the situation in Lebanon has been getting dicey for almost five years now. If anything actually prompted the protests, it was weakness in Damascus. It’s been pretty obvious since about five minutes after Hafez Assad’s death that his opthamologist son isn’t in full control of Syria. Different signals have been coming out of Damascus ever since Bashir took over. So elements in the Lebanese government have been pushing hard to take advantage of this weakness, to mobilize a grass-roots movement to push the Syrians out.
What finally pushed this movement to the breaking point was last year’s controversial (and incredibly dangerous, given the precarious balancing act that gives all factions in Lebanon pieces of the political pie based on population stats – which, incidentally, are long out of date, so look for any democratic reforms in Lebanon to leave the country’s administration looking a lot more like that in neighboring Syria, troops or not) constitutional amendment allowing pro-Syrian president Emile Lahoud to stay on for another three years. That led to Hariri’s resignation as PM, which left him a more viable assassination target. Anyhow, no matter how you look at this, the ball got rolling in Lebanon long, long before there was an election in Iraq.
Now here’s the point where someone can come in and tell everyone how Bush clearly read the way that things were going in the Middle East even before 9/11, and concocted this brilliant plan so that the US could be there to help let freedom reign in 2005.
Also, would it be possible to stifle the “We did it! Bush was right!” stuff until the Iraqis can manage to turn the election results into an actual government? Two months have passed since the glorious day for democracy, and the Shiites and Kurds haven’t been able to come even close to negotiating a coalition government, leaving US puppet PM Iyad Allawi in charge for the foreseeable future, even with Iraq’s national assembly opening this week.
I honestly don’t know how anyone can think that this election sets the stage for a stable, democratic Iraq, much less a stable, democratic Middle East. The Sunnis have bailed on the process almost entirely, and all the Kurds care about is keeping their autonomous militias and getting the Arabs out of Kirkuk, so it can be the capital of the independent Kurdistan that they’ll almost certainly declare the moment that the US quits Iraq.
To say that bush was the cause is inaccurate and pointless boosterism.
To say that the US had nothing to do with it, is equally blindly partisan.
Beyond that, it’s just pointless bickering, unless you’re contracting pollers in the region.
Nothing wrong with pointless bickering though.
http://www.frontpagemagazine.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=16367
More recently, Jumblatt gave an interview to the Arabic London-based Saudi daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat on February 12, 2004, in which he said: “We are all happy when U.S. soldiers are killed [in Iraq] week in and week out. The killing of U.S. soldiers in Iraq is legitimate and obligatory.” The Progressive Socialist Party leader has also said he felt “great joy” at the destruction of the U.S. Space Shuttle Columbia in 2002, because it carried an Israeli astronaut.
um…“interesting” guy…
It seems to me that Jumblatt is a nutball or opportunist (or both) who can be relied upon by anyone to have said something that backs up their preset beliefs. One day he’s pro-Israeli, the next day he’s hoping they all die. One minute he’s pro-Syria, the next minute he’s criticising them publicly. One day he’s anti-American, the next day he’s spouting off about how their policies are a force for good in the Middle East. It seems like he will say anything that will get him what he wants.
Hartford, Conn.: One of the biggest problems for the “Cedar Revolution” in Lebanon has been the widespread perception that it is a movement of the urbane, the Christian, the Westernized, giving rise to the gibes “the Gucci Revolution” and “the BMW Revolution.” Do you think the massive turnout yesterday in Martyrs’ Square defused this criticism?
Jefferson Morley: I think it defused it some by showing the opposition could turn out even more people than Hezbollah last week.
The opposition’s problem isn’t one of image but of demographic reality. The opposition IS lead by Christians and Druze and includeds secular Sunnis. But it doesn’t have many Shiites and they are the largest ethnic-religious grouping in the country.
Somehow the opposition has to have a meeting of the minds with Hezbollah. Which is why Hariri’s widow praised the Syrians (which elicited some booing) and welcomed the prospect of dialogue with Hezbollah, which is more widely accepted.Many of these Christian groups regarded Rafiq Hariri as a Syrian sellout until his martyrdom.
http://discuss.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/zforum/05/world_morley031505.htm
Isn’t that interesting. Here’s a previous article by Jefferson Morley:
It’s easy to see why the Bush administration prefers not to adopt the “intifada” label. Intifada is an Arabic word meaning “shaking off.” It was coined by Palestinians during their spontaneous uprising against Israeli military occupation in 1987. To speak of Lebanon’s “intifada” places this month’s events in the tradition of the Palestinians’ struggle against Israeli occupation. And it implies that Syria, a decaying Arab autocracy, and Israel, a favorite U.S. ally, have something in common as occupying powers.
All of those ideas are credible on the streets of Beirut, where Israel is remembered and reviled for its 1982 invasion. The Israeli Defense Forces, led by then defense minister Ariel Sharon, launched a surprise attack designed to install a friendly government in Beirut. Israel’s bid to dominate the country collapsed amid fierce factional fighting and massacres that devastated Beirut and killed upwards of 10,000 civilians. In the ensuing chaos, the Syrian military moved in, effectively installed their own friendly government, and demanded the Lebanese go along.
Given this history, the “Cedar Revolution” brand is more congenial to the Bush administration. It was coined by Undersecretary of State Paula Dobriansky in a Feb. 28 news conference that touted President Bush’s foreign policy.
“In Lebanon, we see growing momentum for a Cedar Revolution that is unifying the citizens of that nation to the cause of true democracy and freedom from foreign influence,” Dobriansky declared. “Hopeful signs span the globe and there should be no doubt that the years ahead will be great ones for the cause of freedom.”
The Cedar Tree is the national symbol and depicted prominently on the Lebanese flag. The brand name portrays the anti-Syrian protest movement as essentially an effort to recover Lebanon’s national tradition. It gives the movement a Lebanese, not an Arabic, face. It evokes benevolent nature, not unpleasant memories of Israeli military might. It fits rather more comfortably with Bush’s foreign policy notion that “freedom is on the march” in the Middle East.
But no one in the Lebanese press is talking about “the Cedar Revolution.” The cedar tree is the traditional symbol of the country’s Maronite Christians, derived from a reference in the Christian Bible (Psalms 92:12, “the righteous flourish like the palm tree, and grow like a cedar in Lebanon.”), according to the Flags of the World Web site. It was incorporated into the Lebanese flag in 1943 when Christians were a majority of the population and the much poorer Shiite Muslims living in the dusty south were all but shut out of power.
That era is gone. Today, Shiites are the biggest single ethnic/religious grouping in Lebanon. They are represented by Hezbollah, the Shiite political party that holds 12 seats in the 128-member parliament. Denounced by the United States as a terrorist organization, Hezbollah is respected across the Lebanese political spectrum for driving the Israelis out of southern Lebanon in 2000. In the words of the newsweekly Monday Morning “the alliance between Damascus and Hezbollah is now decisive” in maintaining the country’s pro-Syrian political order.
That’s why opposition leader Walid Jumblatt is calling for dialogue with Hezbollah. Jumblatt says he disagrees with Washington’s (and France’s) insistence that Hezbollah disarm immediately.
Al Manar, Hezbollah’s TV station and Web site, reported Wednesday that Jumblatt’s representative will soon meet with Hezbollah’s leadership.
Hezbollah, it is safe to say, wants no part of a U.S.-backed “Cedar Revolution.” But it might be persuaded to join an “intifada for independence,” especially if the new government would allow it to keep its weapons after Syria departs.
A lot hangs on how the Lebanese brand this moment in their political history.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A1911-2005Mar2.html
“Your eyes, they deceive you. Go home. This has nothing to do with Bush. There is nothing going on here but the normal, every day bustle of the Lebanese market place."
For those who believe that Bush’s policies in Iraq are to thank for the people of Lebanon’s gentle uprising: some questions.
Why are they emboldened by the elections in Iraq and not by movements with far more in common with this one, like the Orange Revolution in the Ukraine?
What is it about having another nation invade, kill over a hundred thousand of people searching for WMDs that don’t exist only to later to the invasion into some kind of plan for democratisation, that would embolden the Lebanese?
Why is Bush responsible, in your eyes, for every tiny step forward for democracy that happens in the region from now until forever, even when there is no obvious or direct link?
Why is Bush not equally responsible for every step back in the region?
If you asked the people demonstrating in Beirut, do you think they would say that Bush the one who emboldended them?
For me it is pretty clear that the opposition to Syrian rule hasn’t suddenly exploded because of events in Iraq, because it has always been there. What has happened is that the murder of Hariri acted as a catalyst to bring this highly fractious group together and give them focus. It seems unlikely to me that a nation being occupied by foreign forces would influence Lebanese in any way, especially when the group that is supposedly influenced is a mixed bag of Christians, Muslims and Druze.
It seems to me that claiming the elections in Iraq are responsible for the demonstrations here ignore many huge and much more obvious influences, like Hariri’s murder, the existence of long standing anti-Syrian sentiment, and the gentle democratic uprisings that have occurred in Georgia, Ukraine and other places. It also ignores Bush’s real influences on the movement, that is by pressurising the likes of Saudi Arabia to withdraw support for the Syrians on the issue of troops in Lebanon caused a weakening of Syria’s position. Now that would have emboldened the demonstrators if anything.
So one final question: why is it the invasion of Iraq that you feel is influencing the demonstrators of Beirut and not Bush’s more direct policies regarding their situation?
- Why are they emboldened by the elections in Iraq and not by movements with far more in common with this one, like the Orange Revolution in the Ukraine?
It is all one movement, whatever the particular national nuances – the movement of people toward open/transparent elections and democratic governments. The U.S. is doing heroic work on behalf of most if not all of them.
You may recall that Yushchenko’s movement was buttressed by the principled support of the United States, which publicly warned Putin not to meddle. It got to the point where so-called “Red Ukrainians” were bitterly complaining that U.S. money and expertise were to blame for the Orange Revolution – even the “orange” schtick was attributed to U.S. PR consultants.
(Our greatest aid, of course, was rendered where it really counted – it was U.S. intervention that saved Yushchenko’s life when it needed saving.)
- What is it about having another nation invade, kill over a hundred thousand of people searching for WMDs that don’t exist only to later to the invasion into some kind of plan for democratisation, that would embolden the Lebanese?
While I’m content to let Mr. Jumblatt speak for himself and his supporters, I’ll point out again that regional democratization accompanied American invasions of Western Europe and Greater East Asia. (Unless, for example, you’re willing to argue that fascist Spain “just so happened” to democratize in simultaneous proximity to the invasion of Germany and Italy.)
- Why is Bush responsible, in your eyes, for every tiny step forward for democracy that happens in the region from now until forever, even when there is no obvious or direct link?
As usual, you give us all of the blame and none of the corresponding credit. The United States is widely blamed for the region’s ills because for decades we coddled Middle Eastern regimes. Now, as we apply unprecedented pressure on those regimes, we are given none of the credit for the unshackling of that region’s progressive forces. I might ask, “Which is it – are we all-powerful oppressors, or powerless spectators?”
- Why is Bush not equally responsible for every step back in the region?
I imagine you’d blame Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King for the violence visited upon African-Americans during the civil rights movement. If history has taught us anything, it’s that the forces of progressivism are going to be hit back by the forces of reaction. This is especially true if by “every step back” you mean violence inflicted by Qaeda, Hezbollah, and Baathist militaries.
- If you asked the people demonstrating in Beirut, do you think they would say that Bush the one who emboldened them?
Heavens no – certainly not by that name. Wallid “Wish They’d Got Wolfowitz” Jumblatt is never going to come out and say Bush got it done. I’ll settle for his confession that Iraqi voters inspired him. I’m content to let the force responsible for that Iraqi election go unnamed.
America is going to be the elephant in a lot of progressive rooms over the next few years.
EDIT: Desslock really does sum this up a lot more succinctly above.
As usual, you give us all of the blame and none of the corresponding credit. "
I imagine you’d blame Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King for the violence visited upon African-Americans during the civil rights movement. If history has taught us anything, it’s that the forces of progressivism are going to be hit back by the forces of reaction. This is especially true if by “every step back” you mean violence inflicted by Qaeda, Hezbollah, and Baathist militaries. "
I’m talking about the steps away from democracy in the countries across the region, especially those allied or opposed to America in the war on Iraq, i.e. those most directly affected by it. The reform movement in Iran has been caused great harm by the Iraq invasion, as it allowed the old guard to lock down dissent with the fear of a new enemy on its borders as the great motivator. In other countries, like those allied to the US, freedom and democracy continues to be kept from the people by ferocious dictators, like the Uzbek president who boils his political opponents to death. Do you accept responsibility for these countries as willingly as you embrace Lebanon? I bet not.
This sums up one of the big Neocon problems. You cannot enforce freedom without annihilating it. A system labeled “freedom” is not a state of freedom. Freedom is about the primacy of the will over other influences. US dominance is ONE OF THOSE OTHER INFLUENCES, regardless of whether they claim to be acting in “freedom’s name”.
Freedom from foreign influence? I guess I’m confused about what the foreign influence of the US military is doing in Iraq, in that case.
The CAUSE of freedom is an ideology, not freedom itself. Freedom is the LACK of the influence of causes over the will unless the will supports the causes. You cannot FORCE someone to be free without annihilating freedom in the process. Freedom itself must be subject to the will. Someone’s slavery must be supported if that is as his will dictates.
By “true” democracy they mean the US style of democracy.
This moves into another of the big Neocon problems. They think the US operates out of time, out of place, out of context. The US is not a biased agent but a FORCE OF FREEDOM, a force of democracy. Hand-in-hand with this is that democracy and freedom are HOLY. Undisputable, undebatable, the ultimate righteous cause.
And IN THIS NAME, this invention within their own minds, anything goes. Freedom must be exported at all costs. Freedom must be enforced.
It is the current religion. God gone and freedom here. Oh, and fear the HOLY WRATH of the US as Vengeful Priest if the WILL is supported and not the cause of freedom. The Neocon motto is Our Freedom is enforced upon you. You MUST be free, or you must be our kind of free, and we will see to it that you do!
It is the Crusades all over again, with a different god on the banner. Cleanse the heathens! Anyone who has the EVILNESS to not WANT to be free is cleansed!
You’re creating slaves to freedom out of the same old self-righteousness that created slaves to God.
Oh, so it has to be EITHER all because of one George W. Bush OR all because of Ukraine now?
If y’all spent a tenth of the energy trying to understand each other as you spend setting up Straw Men or generally assuming that anyone who disagrees with you is some kind of extremist, you’d probably discover that we all pretty much agree on everything and learn a few things here and there to boot.
This thread has gone from mildly pointless to inane. I regret starting it.
In a thread already overrun with dumb pointless rants, let me add my own.
Look… any time you have close to a million people all asking for one thing, saying that one reason is The Only Reason is… stupid.
Clearly, what happened in Iraq is one reason. What happened in Ukraine is clearly another reason. Anger over the assassinated leader is yet another. Youth and cultural change is another. There are many many more that we haven’t listed here. As individuals, there are more than one reason; as a group, there’s many reasons. Most of the folks I know who engaged in demonstrations over here for one cause or another did it mostly just “for the feeling of being part of something,” and not because they really had a strong opinion one way or another. My wife avoided post-Tianamen demonstrations when she was in China largely because, although she was in the square the day the shooting happened, because all the people she knew were treating it as a social event, and that rubbed her the wrong way.
Everyone has their reasons.
Is it annoying to read me saying this? Of course. Because you know it. I know it. Everyone knows it. It’s blindingly obvious. No one really thinks that there is only one root cause. So [i]stop arguing like there is![/b] Any statement of the nature, “It’s not because of cause X” is outlandish when you have any realistic evidence to the contrary when you’ve got an event with nearly a million people involved, who all have their own reasons.
Trying to say that “Oh, this guy’s just saying that because he’s a political opportunist,” blah blah blah… yeah, of course he’s a political opportunist, or else he wouldn’t be anywhere as a politician. FUCKING DUH.
But to then go as far as to say, “Oh, these two events are not connected at all” makes you basically a sore loser, a wishful thinker, someone desperately grasping at the straws of a disintegrating worldview as you realize gee, those neocons aren’t completely right, but gee maybe they actually had a point?
I remember a time when liberals actually believed it was a good thing to end the reign of tyrants. Now all I hear is bigotry, where anyone not liberal is either some kind of gun-toting toothless uneducated redneck or a shameless amoral money-grubbing opportunist.
And the conservatives are just as bad! I don’t for a minute think anyone believes Bush and Iraq were the sole cause of what’s happening in Lebanon, but from the way some Conservatives talk who would know any different? They’ll defend Bush because he’s their guy in the same pointless, policy-ignorant way that Democrats defended Clinton because he was their guy.
Since open-minded discussion requires a person to have his mind open wide enough that he might actually change his point of view, and since nobody really WANTS to change their point of view, you end up with people arguing policy without ever discussing policy.
As someone who is neither liberal nor conservative, I’m fucking sick of it. But like a goddamned rubbernecker I keep coming back to political message boards to watch the train wreck as liberals and conservatives duke it out.
breath
I put that little phrase in there because I wanted to see if it would provoke a reaction. Of course, some sophomore always takes the bait.
Is it annoying to read me saying this? Of course. Because you know it. I know it. Everyone knows it. It’s blindingly obvious. No one really thinks that there is only one root cause. So stop arguing like there is![/b] Any statement of the nature, “It’s not because of cause X” is outlandish when you have [i]any realistic evidence to the contrary when you’ve got an event with nearly a million people involved, who all have their own reasons.
Who has been saying there is only one root cause? Certainly not me. In fact I listed a multitude of probable causes, due largely to the exact reasons you state. Maybe you should be expressing ire at those claiming that Bush’s policies are the sole motivator behind these demonstrations. I also don’t have to find evidence to deny the likelihood of any given cause for an event, when the only evidence to support it is the word of a mealy mouthed politician who switches sides at the drop of a hat. The burden of proof lies on those attempting to prove the positive.
Trying to say that “Oh, this guy’s just saying that because he’s a political opportunist,” blah blah blah… yeah, of course he’s a political opportunist, or else he wouldn’t be anywhere as a politician. FUCKING DUH.
There’s opportunists and there’s opportunists. Ones who have a habit of switching from one violently extreme viewpoint to another can hardly be trusted as a barometer of public opinion.
But to then go as far as to say, “Oh, these two events are not connected at all” makes you basically a sore loser, a wishful thinker, someone desperately grasping at the straws of a disintegrating worldview as you realize gee, those neocons aren’t completely right, but gee maybe they actually had a point?
Every event in the world is connected to every other event in the world in some way. The question is whether the influence is significant and whether that influence is for good or bad. Personally I cannot see the significant influence of the Iraq war on the attitudes of the Lebanese. I can see how Bush’s policies in the region have had an impact, because you can draw a direct relationship between diplomatic pressure on Syria and the weakening of their position. I can’t see any connection between invading Iraq and the situation in Lebanon.
In fact it could be argued that it makes life more difficult for anyone trying to undermine Syria’s position. Syria, like Iran, are feeling pretty cocky right now. Iran is developing its nuclear capabilities safe in the knowledge that the American army is bogged down in Iraq. I’m sure Bashar feels similarly comfortable.
What has made Syria uncomfortable is the international pressure put upon them. It’s hard for Syria to justify its position when faced with an array of criticism from countries as divided on international politics as France, Saudi Arabia and the USA. Bush can be commended for his role in that movement, and really this is how I feel he should have been acting all along, but he had a bug up his ass about slapping Saddam around.
I remember a time when liberals actually believed it was a good thing to end the reign of tyrants. Now all I hear is bigotry, where anyone not liberal is either some kind of gun-toting toothless uneducated redneck or a shameless amoral money-grubbing opportunist.
Don’t you think it is a little hypocritical for criticising all “liberals” for generalising all non-liberals?
I put that little phrase in there because I wanted to see if it would provoke a reaction. Of course, some sophomore always takes the bait.
Sure you did it just to bait sophomoric liberals. That’s why you defended it for several posts, even refering to it as a “simple fact” ;).
yeah i’m kind of stupid that way
“Positive claim has the burden of proof” is a claim that gets brought up whenever someone too lazy to back up his claim meets someone too lazy to make any sense of it. I hate that.
Where are these people attributing what’s happening in Lebanon solely to Bush? Please introduce me to one. Just one. And White House PR doesn’t count, because they’d claim Bush was responsible for curing AIDS if it happened under his watch, just the same as the Democrats would blame him for causing it if they could get away with it.
As for singling out “liberals” as a group, I know of what group I speak – I speak not of the vast hordes of people for whom certain liberal policies make sense (as I am one of those, just as I am also one for whom certain conservative policies make sense), but to that peculiar hardcore who generally believe that you must be either stupid or evil to believe that most anything Bush does is either stupid or evil.
I have at least one friend who has told me as much, in as many words: “The only reason anyone would believe anything other than what I believe is if they are stupid or evil.” We’re talking about a mid-20’s guy with a Bachelor’s degree in a technical field, not someone who is either experienced or educated.
If you’re over 20, you’re too old to still think you have all the answers; if you’re still alive, you’re too young to stop trying to understand.
The folks on this board are clearly intelligent. I wish that intelligence was directed towards productive uses for discussing politics, rather than dick-measuring and covering up deep-seated insecurities. On the other hand, I’m not exactly helping by being an attention-grabbing post whore.
btw, the fact that Iraq has had some effect is a simple fact… in the context of a very complex situation. :)