Wednesday, February 16, 2005
Well, it's Lebanon's turn now. Syria's killing of Rafik Hariri was most likely the straw that broke the famous camel's back. Let's help the Lebanese freedom-lovers join their Iraqi friends!
Let freedom reign!
'Hama Rules'
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN Published: February 17, 2005
About two weeks ago, a friend of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri stopped by my office to update me on Lebanon and pass on a message from Mr. Hariri, whom I have known since reporting from Beirut in the late 1970's. The message was that the Lebanese opposition to the Syrian occupation was getting united - inspired both by the example of Iraq and by the growing excesses of the Syrian occupation. Mr. Hariri, his friend said, was planning to use the coming Lebanese parliamentary elections, and a hoped-for victory by the opposition front, to send a real message to the Syrians: It's time for you to go.
Advertisement
There is no excuse anymore for Syria's occupation of Lebanon, other than naked imperialism and a desire to siphon off Lebanese resources. If the U.S. government and media really care about democracy in the Arab world, Mr. Hariri's envoy said, then the U.S. has to get behind those trying to rescue the oldest real Arab democracy, Lebanon, from the Syrian grip.
Well, Rafik, this one's for you. I am sorry you won't be able to read it.
It will be difficult to prove who killed Mr. Hariri. But the gang ruling Syria had all the ability, experience and motive to murder the Lebanese statesman for the way he had teamed up with Paris and Washington to pass the recent U.N. resolution, 1559, calling for Syria's immediate withdrawal from Lebanon. Mr. Hariri pressed for that U.N. resolution, and resigned his office, after Syria perverted Lebanese democracy by forcing Lebanon's Parliament to accept a three-year extension for a Syrian puppet, Émile Lahoud, as Lebanon's president.
When Syria's Baath regime feels its back up against the wall, it always resorts to "Hama Rules." Hama Rules is a term I coined after the Syrian Army leveled - and I mean leveled - a portion of its own city, Hama, to put down a rebellion by Sunni Muslim fundamentalists there in 1982. Some 10,000 to 20,000 Syrians were buried in the ruble. Monday's murder of Mr. Hariri, a self-made billionaire who devoted his money and energy to rebuilding Lebanon after its civil war, had all the hallmarks of Hama Rules - beginning with 650 pounds of dynamite to incinerate an armor-plated motorcade.
Message from the Syrian regime to Washington, Paris and Lebanon's opposition: "You want to play here, you'd better be ready to play by Hama Rules - and Hama Rules are no rules at all. You want to squeeze us with Iraq on one side and the Lebanese opposition on the other, you'd better be able to put more than U.N. resolutions on the table. You'd better be ready to go all the way - because we will. But you Americans are exhausted by Iraq, and you Lebanese don't have the guts to stand up to us, and you French make a mean croissant but you've got no Hama Rules in your arsenal. So remember, we blow up prime ministers here. We shoot journalists. We fire on the Red Cross. We leveled one of our own cities. You want to play by Hama Rules, let's see what you've got. Otherwise, hasta la vista, baby."
It is a measure, though, of just how disgusted the Lebanese are with the Syrian occupation and Hama Rules that everyone - from senior Lebanese politicians, like the courageous Walid Jumblatt, to street protesters - is openly accusing Syria of Mr. Hariri's murder.
What else can the Lebanese do? They must unite all their communities and hit the Syrian regime with "Baghdad Rules," which were demonstrated 10 days ago by the Iraqi people. Baghdad Rules are when an Arab public does something totally unprecedented: it takes to the streets, despite the threat of violence from jihadists and Baathists, and expresses its democratic will.
Rafik Hariri stopped playing by "Lebanese Rules" - eating any crow the Syrians crammed down Lebanon's throat - and openly challenged Syrian imperialism. If the Lebanese want to be free, they have got to take the lead. They have to summon the same civic courage that Mr. Hariri did and that the Iraqi public did - the courage to look the fascists around them in the eye, call them in the press and in public by their real names, and confront the European Union and the Arab League for their willingness to ignore the Syrian oppression.
Nothing drives a dictatorship like Syria's more crazy than civil disobedience and truth-telling: when people stop being intimidated, stand up for their own freedom and go on strike against their occupiers. The Lebanese can't play by Hama Rules and must stop playing by the old Lebanese Rules. They must start playing by Baghdad Rules.
Baghdad Rules mean the Lebanese giving the Syrian regime - every day, everywhere - the purple finger.
Let freedom reign!
'Hama Rules'
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN Published: February 17, 2005
About two weeks ago, a friend of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri stopped by my office to update me on Lebanon and pass on a message from Mr. Hariri, whom I have known since reporting from Beirut in the late 1970's. The message was that the Lebanese opposition to the Syrian occupation was getting united - inspired both by the example of Iraq and by the growing excesses of the Syrian occupation. Mr. Hariri, his friend said, was planning to use the coming Lebanese parliamentary elections, and a hoped-for victory by the opposition front, to send a real message to the Syrians: It's time for you to go.
Advertisement
There is no excuse anymore for Syria's occupation of Lebanon, other than naked imperialism and a desire to siphon off Lebanese resources. If the U.S. government and media really care about democracy in the Arab world, Mr. Hariri's envoy said, then the U.S. has to get behind those trying to rescue the oldest real Arab democracy, Lebanon, from the Syrian grip.
Well, Rafik, this one's for you. I am sorry you won't be able to read it.
It will be difficult to prove who killed Mr. Hariri. But the gang ruling Syria had all the ability, experience and motive to murder the Lebanese statesman for the way he had teamed up with Paris and Washington to pass the recent U.N. resolution, 1559, calling for Syria's immediate withdrawal from Lebanon. Mr. Hariri pressed for that U.N. resolution, and resigned his office, after Syria perverted Lebanese democracy by forcing Lebanon's Parliament to accept a three-year extension for a Syrian puppet, Émile Lahoud, as Lebanon's president.
When Syria's Baath regime feels its back up against the wall, it always resorts to "Hama Rules." Hama Rules is a term I coined after the Syrian Army leveled - and I mean leveled - a portion of its own city, Hama, to put down a rebellion by Sunni Muslim fundamentalists there in 1982. Some 10,000 to 20,000 Syrians were buried in the ruble. Monday's murder of Mr. Hariri, a self-made billionaire who devoted his money and energy to rebuilding Lebanon after its civil war, had all the hallmarks of Hama Rules - beginning with 650 pounds of dynamite to incinerate an armor-plated motorcade.
Message from the Syrian regime to Washington, Paris and Lebanon's opposition: "You want to play here, you'd better be ready to play by Hama Rules - and Hama Rules are no rules at all. You want to squeeze us with Iraq on one side and the Lebanese opposition on the other, you'd better be able to put more than U.N. resolutions on the table. You'd better be ready to go all the way - because we will. But you Americans are exhausted by Iraq, and you Lebanese don't have the guts to stand up to us, and you French make a mean croissant but you've got no Hama Rules in your arsenal. So remember, we blow up prime ministers here. We shoot journalists. We fire on the Red Cross. We leveled one of our own cities. You want to play by Hama Rules, let's see what you've got. Otherwise, hasta la vista, baby."
It is a measure, though, of just how disgusted the Lebanese are with the Syrian occupation and Hama Rules that everyone - from senior Lebanese politicians, like the courageous Walid Jumblatt, to street protesters - is openly accusing Syria of Mr. Hariri's murder.
What else can the Lebanese do? They must unite all their communities and hit the Syrian regime with "Baghdad Rules," which were demonstrated 10 days ago by the Iraqi people. Baghdad Rules are when an Arab public does something totally unprecedented: it takes to the streets, despite the threat of violence from jihadists and Baathists, and expresses its democratic will.
Rafik Hariri stopped playing by "Lebanese Rules" - eating any crow the Syrians crammed down Lebanon's throat - and openly challenged Syrian imperialism. If the Lebanese want to be free, they have got to take the lead. They have to summon the same civic courage that Mr. Hariri did and that the Iraqi public did - the courage to look the fascists around them in the eye, call them in the press and in public by their real names, and confront the European Union and the Arab League for their willingness to ignore the Syrian oppression.
Nothing drives a dictatorship like Syria's more crazy than civil disobedience and truth-telling: when people stop being intimidated, stand up for their own freedom and go on strike against their occupiers. The Lebanese can't play by Hama Rules and must stop playing by the old Lebanese Rules. They must start playing by Baghdad Rules.
Baghdad Rules mean the Lebanese giving the Syrian regime - every day, everywhere - the purple finger.
Tuesday, February 15, 2005
foreigners
Beirut Blowback
The presence of U.S. troops in Iraq emboldened the Lebanese opposition. Now Rafik Hariri is dead. What's our next move?
By Lee Smith
Slate Posted Tuesday, Feb. 15, 2005, at 11:35 AM PT
I just returned from Lebanon, where I spent the last month enjoying the nightlife, the good food and wine, the historical sites like Baalbek, and the temperate Mediterranean weather. It's not yet clear whether Syria, which has spent more than a quarter of a century in that beautiful country, will be leaving soon, too.
I was working on the first entry in a weeklong "Well-Traveled" series about my tours through Lebanon on Monday morning when I heard that Rafik Hariri, the former prime minister, had been assassinated in Beirut. Even though some Arabic Web sites are suggesting that Israel is behind the murder, and a previously unknown jihadist group has claimed it killed Hariri because he supported the Saudi regime, it is almost certain that Syrian security services are culpable.
Hariri, who resigned his post in October to protest Syria’s decision to extend the term of Lebanese President Emile Lahoud, had cast his lot with the growing body of Lebanese opposition figures. Most of them are Christian, though Druze leader Walid Jumblatt has in the last several months perhaps been Syria's most vocal critic. Agents working for Syrian President Bashar Assad's father, Hafez, assassinated Jumblatt's father Kemal in 1977, so the son knows he has a lot to lose. Perhaps Hariri, a Sunni Muslim who in the past had been close to Damascus, thought he was immune. The place chosen for his death will remind everyone that the Syrians have a vicious sense of irony. His motorcade was immolated between the five-star Phoenecia Hotel and the as-yet-unfinished St. George Hotel and Yacht Club, which abuts the city's famous seaside corniche, where residential, retail, and hotel properties fetch hefty sums of money. In the wake of Lebanon's 15-year civil war, Hariri played a key role in developing this property, which, in turn, made him a billionaire, a major political force in Lebanon, and a regional player with important patrons in both Saudi Arabia and Europe. Apparently, the message behind the murder of this real-estate and media giant is that no one in Lebanon really has power, Syria only leases it out.
Clearly, this is a setback for the Lebanese opposition movement. While it's true that the opposition was initially galvanized last fall when Syria changed Lebanon's electoral laws allowing Lahoud another term, "sister Syria" has visited many indignities on its sibling over the years. The Lebanese opposition has materialized now largely in response to American and European pressure. It's an index of how bad Syria really is that President Bashar Assad's regime got the United States and France to agree on policy, as they did with 2004's U.N. Security Resolution 1559, demanding that Syria withdraw its troops from Lebanon immediately. And yet, arguably, what has most emboldened Lebanese opposition figures is the presence of U.S. forces on the Syrian border in Iraq.
Opposition leaders grabbed at the main chance when they saw how furious Washington was with Assad's continued support of the insurgency in Iraq. The White House has been threatening Syria for some time now and upped the ante by making the regime's occupation of Lebanon a high and very public priority in its Middle East policy. Of course, the Syrians do not want to leave Lebanon, but if they must, they at least want to depart on their own terms. In the meantime, Damascus wants the United States to shut up and remember how bad it can make things in this part of the world for American presidents and their interesting ideas. Certainly, the Syrians have not forgotten how, in 1983, they helped drive the United States from the region when a Damascus-backed militia killed 241 Marines, sailors, and soldiers with a car bomb.
Some hopeful Lebanese observers believe that the Assad regime has pushed its luck too far with Hariri's murder and will pay the consequences. Europe and the United States, these optimists hold, will make good on their promise that political assassinations will signal an "irrevocable divorce with the international community," and that, unlike his predecessors, the current American president has the grit to stand up to Syria.
For his part, however, Assad is gambling that for all its tough talk, the White House has neither the troops, the time, the energy, nor the domestic political credibility to back up its threats. The Syrians are probably not wrong. After all, what kind of meaningful action can the United States take? A missile strike against Damascus will add much to Syrian prestige in the region and little to that of Washington, unless the White House is willing to commit troops—and right now those troops are tied down in Iraq. In short, Assad has called Bush's bluff.
To understand the repercussions, remember that the White House has maintained that success in Iraq would have ripple effects throughout the region. As it turned out, this is true. The presence of U.S. forces in Iraq indicated that the United States meant business, a posture that encouraged the Lebanese opposition to challenge Syria. But the ripple effect also works the other way. If opposition figures are assassinated in Beirut, this is a message that, for all its power, the United States can't always be there to protect you. Even worse is that if the Bush administration does nothing about Hariri's murder, the message will be that Washington cannot and will not protect you at all. It will be very hard to get people in the region to work with the United States if everyone believes that there is no difference between sticking your neck out and handing an executioner his weapon. It will cost Washington prestige among its allies in Iraq and show convenient "friends" like Egypt and Saudi Arabia that the White House is so vulnerable there is little price to be paid for ignoring it.
The Iraqi elections, though a landmark moment in the Arab world, were also an anomalous blip on the screen of Middle East history. The Syrians are making a very powerful argument about their vision of the region. U.S. interests and the lives of our friends and potential allies depend on our making an equally strong case.
Lee Smith, who lives in Brooklyn, is writing a book on Arab culture. You can e-mail him at LHS462@hotmail.com.
Beirut Blowback
The presence of U.S. troops in Iraq emboldened the Lebanese opposition. Now Rafik Hariri is dead. What's our next move?
By Lee Smith
Slate Posted Tuesday, Feb. 15, 2005, at 11:35 AM PT
I just returned from Lebanon, where I spent the last month enjoying the nightlife, the good food and wine, the historical sites like Baalbek, and the temperate Mediterranean weather. It's not yet clear whether Syria, which has spent more than a quarter of a century in that beautiful country, will be leaving soon, too.
I was working on the first entry in a weeklong "Well-Traveled" series about my tours through Lebanon on Monday morning when I heard that Rafik Hariri, the former prime minister, had been assassinated in Beirut. Even though some Arabic Web sites are suggesting that Israel is behind the murder, and a previously unknown jihadist group has claimed it killed Hariri because he supported the Saudi regime, it is almost certain that Syrian security services are culpable.
Hariri, who resigned his post in October to protest Syria’s decision to extend the term of Lebanese President Emile Lahoud, had cast his lot with the growing body of Lebanese opposition figures. Most of them are Christian, though Druze leader Walid Jumblatt has in the last several months perhaps been Syria's most vocal critic. Agents working for Syrian President Bashar Assad's father, Hafez, assassinated Jumblatt's father Kemal in 1977, so the son knows he has a lot to lose. Perhaps Hariri, a Sunni Muslim who in the past had been close to Damascus, thought he was immune. The place chosen for his death will remind everyone that the Syrians have a vicious sense of irony. His motorcade was immolated between the five-star Phoenecia Hotel and the as-yet-unfinished St. George Hotel and Yacht Club, which abuts the city's famous seaside corniche, where residential, retail, and hotel properties fetch hefty sums of money. In the wake of Lebanon's 15-year civil war, Hariri played a key role in developing this property, which, in turn, made him a billionaire, a major political force in Lebanon, and a regional player with important patrons in both Saudi Arabia and Europe. Apparently, the message behind the murder of this real-estate and media giant is that no one in Lebanon really has power, Syria only leases it out.
Clearly, this is a setback for the Lebanese opposition movement. While it's true that the opposition was initially galvanized last fall when Syria changed Lebanon's electoral laws allowing Lahoud another term, "sister Syria" has visited many indignities on its sibling over the years. The Lebanese opposition has materialized now largely in response to American and European pressure. It's an index of how bad Syria really is that President Bashar Assad's regime got the United States and France to agree on policy, as they did with 2004's U.N. Security Resolution 1559, demanding that Syria withdraw its troops from Lebanon immediately. And yet, arguably, what has most emboldened Lebanese opposition figures is the presence of U.S. forces on the Syrian border in Iraq.
Opposition leaders grabbed at the main chance when they saw how furious Washington was with Assad's continued support of the insurgency in Iraq. The White House has been threatening Syria for some time now and upped the ante by making the regime's occupation of Lebanon a high and very public priority in its Middle East policy. Of course, the Syrians do not want to leave Lebanon, but if they must, they at least want to depart on their own terms. In the meantime, Damascus wants the United States to shut up and remember how bad it can make things in this part of the world for American presidents and their interesting ideas. Certainly, the Syrians have not forgotten how, in 1983, they helped drive the United States from the region when a Damascus-backed militia killed 241 Marines, sailors, and soldiers with a car bomb.
Some hopeful Lebanese observers believe that the Assad regime has pushed its luck too far with Hariri's murder and will pay the consequences. Europe and the United States, these optimists hold, will make good on their promise that political assassinations will signal an "irrevocable divorce with the international community," and that, unlike his predecessors, the current American president has the grit to stand up to Syria.
For his part, however, Assad is gambling that for all its tough talk, the White House has neither the troops, the time, the energy, nor the domestic political credibility to back up its threats. The Syrians are probably not wrong. After all, what kind of meaningful action can the United States take? A missile strike against Damascus will add much to Syrian prestige in the region and little to that of Washington, unless the White House is willing to commit troops—and right now those troops are tied down in Iraq. In short, Assad has called Bush's bluff.
To understand the repercussions, remember that the White House has maintained that success in Iraq would have ripple effects throughout the region. As it turned out, this is true. The presence of U.S. forces in Iraq indicated that the United States meant business, a posture that encouraged the Lebanese opposition to challenge Syria. But the ripple effect also works the other way. If opposition figures are assassinated in Beirut, this is a message that, for all its power, the United States can't always be there to protect you. Even worse is that if the Bush administration does nothing about Hariri's murder, the message will be that Washington cannot and will not protect you at all. It will be very hard to get people in the region to work with the United States if everyone believes that there is no difference between sticking your neck out and handing an executioner his weapon. It will cost Washington prestige among its allies in Iraq and show convenient "friends" like Egypt and Saudi Arabia that the White House is so vulnerable there is little price to be paid for ignoring it.
The Iraqi elections, though a landmark moment in the Arab world, were also an anomalous blip on the screen of Middle East history. The Syrians are making a very powerful argument about their vision of the region. U.S. interests and the lives of our friends and potential allies depend on our making an equally strong case.
Lee Smith, who lives in Brooklyn, is writing a book on Arab culture. You can e-mail him at LHS462@hotmail.com.
Fantastic Michael Ledeen!
Watersheds
We live in a time of democratic revolution.
Has there ever been a more dramatic moment than this one? The Middle East is boiling, as the failed tyrants scramble to come to terms with the political tsunami unleashed on Afghanistan and Iraq. The power of democratic revolution can be seen in every country in the region. Even the Saudi royal family has had to stage a farcical "election." But this first halting step has fooled no one. Only males could vote, no political parties were permitted, and only the Wahhabi establishment was permitted to organize. The results will not satisfy any serious person. As Iraq constitutes a new, representative government, and wave after wave of elections sweep through the region, even the Saudis will have to submit to the freely expressed desires of their people.
The tidal wave has even reached into the planet's darkest corners, most recently shaking the foundations of the North Korean hermit kingdom. A new leader is announced at the same time the monsters in Pyongyang whisper "We've got nukes" and demand legitimacy from George W. Bush. Given the opacity of the country, and the irrationality of its leaders, nobody seems to know whether the Dear Leader is still alive, or, if he is, why the transition has been proclaimed. But the North Koreans, as tyrants everywhere on the planet, are acting like a regime no longer confident in its own legitimacy. Notice that the world's longest-running dictator, old man Castro, is conjuring up the illusion of American assassination teams planning the murder of his buddy in Venezuela, even as Fidel promises death to anyone who has the nerve to propose popular validation of his own failed tyranny. Such is the drama of our time.
Free elections do not solve all problems. The fascist tyrants of the last century were enormously popular, and won huge electoral victories; Stalin was truly loved by millions of oppressed Soviets; and fanatics might win an election today in some unhappy lands. But this is a revolutionary moment, we are unexpectedly blessed with a revolutionary president, and very few peoples will freely support a new dictatorship, even one that claims Divine Right.
But the wheel turns, as ever. Such moments are transient, and if they are not seized, they will pass, leaving the bitter aftertaste of failure in dry mouths and throttled throats. The world looks to us for more action, not just brave words, and we must understand both the quality of this moment and the revolutionary strategy we need to adopt to ensure that the revolution succeeds. Above all, we must applaud those who got it right, starting with the president, and discard the advice of those who got it wrong, including some of our "professional experts."
The two great elections of recent months were held in Iraq and Ukraine. In both cases, the conventional wisdom was wrong. The conventional wisdom embraced the elitist notion that neither the Ukrainians nor the Iraqis were "ready" for democracy, because they lacked one or another component of the so-called requirements for a free society. Their alleged limitations ranged from historical tradition and internal conflicts to a lack of education and culture and insufficient internal "stability." How I hate the word stability! Is it not the antithesis of everything we stand for? We are the embodiment of revolutionary change, at home and abroad. Most of the time, those who deplore a lack of stability are in reality apologizing for dictators, and selling out great masses of people who wish to be free. And even as those un-American apologists invoke stability, we, as the incarnation of democratic capitalism, are unleashing creative destruction in all directions, sending once-great corporations to history's garbage heap, voting once-glorious leaders into early retirement, and inspiring people everywhere to seek their own happiness by asserting their right to be free.
The Ukrainians are now in control, but the Iraqis still have to contend with the discredited meddlers and schemers who never believed in their democracy, and still seek to place failed puppets in positions of power in Baghdad. Anyone who reads the dozens of blogs from Iraq — which express a wide range of political opinion — must surely see that the Allawi interregnum has failed. The results of the election speak clearly: The Allawi list was outvoted five to one by its major opponents, even though Allawi commanded a treasure chest vastly greater than that of the others. Ambassador Negroponte, Secretary of State Rice, and DCI Goss should tell their "experts" to admit error, and cease their efforts to install a president and prime minister who reflect the consensus of Foggy Bottom rather than the will of the Iraqi people. If they persist in attempting to dictate the makeup of the new Iraqi government, and continue to meddle in the drafting of the new Iraqi constitution, they will turn the majority of Iraqis against us. Despite countless errors of judgment and commission, we have, for the moment at least, won a glorious victory. We should be smart enough, and modest enough, to accept it.
This glorious victory is due in large part to the truly heroic performance of our armed forces, most recently in that great turning point, the battle of Fallujah. Our victory in Fallujah has had enormous consequences, first of all because the information we gathered there has made it possible to capture or kill considerable numbers of terrorists and their leaders. It also sent a chill through the spinal column of the terror network, because it exposed the lie at the heart of their global recruitment campaign. As captured terrorists have told the region on Iraqi television and radio, they signed up for jihad because they had been told that the anti-American crusade in Iraq was a great success, and they wanted to participate in the slaughter of the Jews, crusaders, and infidels. But when they got to Iraq — and discovered that the terrorist leaders immediately confiscated their travel documents so that they could not escape their terrible destiny — they saw that the opposite was true. The slaughter — of which Fallujah was the inescapable proof — was that of the jihadists at the hands of the joint coalition and Iraqi forces.
Thirdly, the brilliant maneuvers of the Army and Marine forces in Fallujah produced strategic surprise. The terrorists expected an attack from the south, and when we suddenly smashed into the heart of the city from the north, they panicked and ran, leaving behind a treasure trove of information, subsequently augmented by newly cooperative would-be martyrs. Above all, the intelligence from Fallujah — and I have this from military people recently returned from the city — documented in enormous detail the massive involvement of the governments of Syria and Iran in the terror war in Iraq. And the high proportion of Saudi "recruits" among the jihadists leaves little doubt that the folks in Riyadh are, at a minimum, not doing much to stop the flow of fanatical Wahhabis from the south.
Thus, the great force of the democratic revolution is now in collision with the firmly rooted tyrannical objects in Tehran, Damascus, and Riyadh. In one of history's fine little ironies, the "Arab street," long considered our mortal enemy, now threatens Muslim tyrants, and yearns for support from us. That is our immediate task.
It would be an error of enormous proportions if, on the verge of a revolutionary transformation of the Middle East, we backed away from this historic mission. It would be doubly tragic if we did it because of one of two possible failures of vision: insisting on focusing on Iraq alone, and viewing military power as the prime element in our revolutionary strategy. Revolution often comes from the barrel of a gun, but not always. Having demonstrated our military might, we must now employ our political artillery against the surviving terror masters. The great political battlefield in the Middle East is, as it has been all along, Iran, the mother of modern terrorism, the creator of Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad, and the prime mover of Hamas. When the murderous mullahs fall in Tehran, the terror network will splinter into its component parts, and the jihadist doctrine will be exposed as the embodiment of failed lies and misguided messianism.
The instrument of their destruction is democratic revolution, not war, and the first salvo in the political battle of Iran is national referendum. Let the Iranian people express their desires in the simplest way possible: "Do you want an Islamic republic?" Send Lech Walesa and Vaclav Havel to supervise the vote. Let the contending parties compete openly and freely, let newspapers publish, let radios and televisions broadcast, fully supported by the free nations. If the mullahs accept this gauntlet, I have every confidence that Iran will be on the path to freedom within months. If, fearing a massive rejection from their own people, the tyrants of Tehran reject a free referendum and reassert their repression, then the free nations will know it is time to deploy the full panoply of pressure to enable the Iranians to gain their freedom.
The time is now. Faster, please.
Watersheds
We live in a time of democratic revolution.
Has there ever been a more dramatic moment than this one? The Middle East is boiling, as the failed tyrants scramble to come to terms with the political tsunami unleashed on Afghanistan and Iraq. The power of democratic revolution can be seen in every country in the region. Even the Saudi royal family has had to stage a farcical "election." But this first halting step has fooled no one. Only males could vote, no political parties were permitted, and only the Wahhabi establishment was permitted to organize. The results will not satisfy any serious person. As Iraq constitutes a new, representative government, and wave after wave of elections sweep through the region, even the Saudis will have to submit to the freely expressed desires of their people.
The tidal wave has even reached into the planet's darkest corners, most recently shaking the foundations of the North Korean hermit kingdom. A new leader is announced at the same time the monsters in Pyongyang whisper "We've got nukes" and demand legitimacy from George W. Bush. Given the opacity of the country, and the irrationality of its leaders, nobody seems to know whether the Dear Leader is still alive, or, if he is, why the transition has been proclaimed. But the North Koreans, as tyrants everywhere on the planet, are acting like a regime no longer confident in its own legitimacy. Notice that the world's longest-running dictator, old man Castro, is conjuring up the illusion of American assassination teams planning the murder of his buddy in Venezuela, even as Fidel promises death to anyone who has the nerve to propose popular validation of his own failed tyranny. Such is the drama of our time.
Free elections do not solve all problems. The fascist tyrants of the last century were enormously popular, and won huge electoral victories; Stalin was truly loved by millions of oppressed Soviets; and fanatics might win an election today in some unhappy lands. But this is a revolutionary moment, we are unexpectedly blessed with a revolutionary president, and very few peoples will freely support a new dictatorship, even one that claims Divine Right.
But the wheel turns, as ever. Such moments are transient, and if they are not seized, they will pass, leaving the bitter aftertaste of failure in dry mouths and throttled throats. The world looks to us for more action, not just brave words, and we must understand both the quality of this moment and the revolutionary strategy we need to adopt to ensure that the revolution succeeds. Above all, we must applaud those who got it right, starting with the president, and discard the advice of those who got it wrong, including some of our "professional experts."
The two great elections of recent months were held in Iraq and Ukraine. In both cases, the conventional wisdom was wrong. The conventional wisdom embraced the elitist notion that neither the Ukrainians nor the Iraqis were "ready" for democracy, because they lacked one or another component of the so-called requirements for a free society. Their alleged limitations ranged from historical tradition and internal conflicts to a lack of education and culture and insufficient internal "stability." How I hate the word stability! Is it not the antithesis of everything we stand for? We are the embodiment of revolutionary change, at home and abroad. Most of the time, those who deplore a lack of stability are in reality apologizing for dictators, and selling out great masses of people who wish to be free. And even as those un-American apologists invoke stability, we, as the incarnation of democratic capitalism, are unleashing creative destruction in all directions, sending once-great corporations to history's garbage heap, voting once-glorious leaders into early retirement, and inspiring people everywhere to seek their own happiness by asserting their right to be free.
The Ukrainians are now in control, but the Iraqis still have to contend with the discredited meddlers and schemers who never believed in their democracy, and still seek to place failed puppets in positions of power in Baghdad. Anyone who reads the dozens of blogs from Iraq — which express a wide range of political opinion — must surely see that the Allawi interregnum has failed. The results of the election speak clearly: The Allawi list was outvoted five to one by its major opponents, even though Allawi commanded a treasure chest vastly greater than that of the others. Ambassador Negroponte, Secretary of State Rice, and DCI Goss should tell their "experts" to admit error, and cease their efforts to install a president and prime minister who reflect the consensus of Foggy Bottom rather than the will of the Iraqi people. If they persist in attempting to dictate the makeup of the new Iraqi government, and continue to meddle in the drafting of the new Iraqi constitution, they will turn the majority of Iraqis against us. Despite countless errors of judgment and commission, we have, for the moment at least, won a glorious victory. We should be smart enough, and modest enough, to accept it.
This glorious victory is due in large part to the truly heroic performance of our armed forces, most recently in that great turning point, the battle of Fallujah. Our victory in Fallujah has had enormous consequences, first of all because the information we gathered there has made it possible to capture or kill considerable numbers of terrorists and their leaders. It also sent a chill through the spinal column of the terror network, because it exposed the lie at the heart of their global recruitment campaign. As captured terrorists have told the region on Iraqi television and radio, they signed up for jihad because they had been told that the anti-American crusade in Iraq was a great success, and they wanted to participate in the slaughter of the Jews, crusaders, and infidels. But when they got to Iraq — and discovered that the terrorist leaders immediately confiscated their travel documents so that they could not escape their terrible destiny — they saw that the opposite was true. The slaughter — of which Fallujah was the inescapable proof — was that of the jihadists at the hands of the joint coalition and Iraqi forces.
Thirdly, the brilliant maneuvers of the Army and Marine forces in Fallujah produced strategic surprise. The terrorists expected an attack from the south, and when we suddenly smashed into the heart of the city from the north, they panicked and ran, leaving behind a treasure trove of information, subsequently augmented by newly cooperative would-be martyrs. Above all, the intelligence from Fallujah — and I have this from military people recently returned from the city — documented in enormous detail the massive involvement of the governments of Syria and Iran in the terror war in Iraq. And the high proportion of Saudi "recruits" among the jihadists leaves little doubt that the folks in Riyadh are, at a minimum, not doing much to stop the flow of fanatical Wahhabis from the south.
Thus, the great force of the democratic revolution is now in collision with the firmly rooted tyrannical objects in Tehran, Damascus, and Riyadh. In one of history's fine little ironies, the "Arab street," long considered our mortal enemy, now threatens Muslim tyrants, and yearns for support from us. That is our immediate task.
It would be an error of enormous proportions if, on the verge of a revolutionary transformation of the Middle East, we backed away from this historic mission. It would be doubly tragic if we did it because of one of two possible failures of vision: insisting on focusing on Iraq alone, and viewing military power as the prime element in our revolutionary strategy. Revolution often comes from the barrel of a gun, but not always. Having demonstrated our military might, we must now employ our political artillery against the surviving terror masters. The great political battlefield in the Middle East is, as it has been all along, Iran, the mother of modern terrorism, the creator of Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad, and the prime mover of Hamas. When the murderous mullahs fall in Tehran, the terror network will splinter into its component parts, and the jihadist doctrine will be exposed as the embodiment of failed lies and misguided messianism.
The instrument of their destruction is democratic revolution, not war, and the first salvo in the political battle of Iran is national referendum. Let the Iranian people express their desires in the simplest way possible: "Do you want an Islamic republic?" Send Lech Walesa and Vaclav Havel to supervise the vote. Let the contending parties compete openly and freely, let newspapers publish, let radios and televisions broadcast, fully supported by the free nations. If the mullahs accept this gauntlet, I have every confidence that Iran will be on the path to freedom within months. If, fearing a massive rejection from their own people, the tyrants of Tehran reject a free referendum and reassert their repression, then the free nations will know it is time to deploy the full panoply of pressure to enable the Iranians to gain their freedom.
The time is now. Faster, please.
Sunday, February 13, 2005
Egypt's Gamble
By Jackson Diehl
Monday, February 14, 2005; Page A17
The appearance of Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit and intelligence chief Omar Suleiman in Washington this week should bring to a head a bold attempt by their country's strongman, Hosni Mubarak, to neuter President Bush's campaign for democracy in the Middle East within weeks of his inaugural address.
Mubarak's brazen gambit was encapsulated by two events on successive days last week. On Tuesday he played host in Sharm el-Sheikh as Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas declared a cease-fire. On Wednesday his police in Cairo arrested the deputy leader of the new, liberal democratic Tomorrow political party and banned its newspaper from publishing its first issue -- even though 10 days before the Bush administration had strongly objected to the arrest of the party's chairman, Ayman Nour.
Mubarak is betting that Gheit and Suleiman will be greeted at the State Department and White House as close collaborators in a budding Israeli-Palestinian detente, not as representatives of a government engaged in an expanding crackdown on its secular and democratic opposition. If so, the 76-year-old president will feel secure in continuing a campaign aimed at crushing what has been mounting opposition among the Egyptian political and business elite to his plan to extend his quarter-century in office by six years through a rigged referendum this fall. His son, Gamal, waits in the wings to succeed him.
Bush, who in his State of the Union speech called on Egypt to "show the way" toward democracy in the Middle East, will look feckless and foolish if a regime so deeply dependent on U.S. military and economic aid stages another fraudulent election while jailing the very politicians who support his vision. But Mubarak is betting that this U.S president, like those who preceded him, won't seriously confront him or threaten his economic lifeline at a sensitive moment in the "peace process."
He may or may not be right. Some officials tell me that the Egyptians will get a cool, if not cold, reception in Washington and will be told that the jailing of Nour and his deputy, Moussa Mustafa, is unacceptable. Bush, one source said, is "furious" about the arrests. A U.S. diplomatic letter has been drafted, but not yet dispatched, to other members of the Group of Eight industrial nations; it describes Mubarak's political crackdown in harsh terms and suggests that G-8 participation in an early March meeting in Egypt with the Arab League should be reconsidered.
One official I spoke to pointed out that Condoleezza Rice is due to pay her first visit as secretary of state to the Arab Middle East for the Arab League meeting. If Nour is not freed, the official predicted, Rice may cancel the trip: "She is not going to sit there like a potted plant while the Egyptians do this." But Rice hasn't addressed the issue, and there is no consensus inside the administration on such a tough response. Predictably, the U.S. Embassy in Cairo is urging caution; it argues that an overly aggressive U.S. reaction would play into the hands of Egyptian "hard-liners." Such limp logic, of course, is exactly what the chief hard-liner -- Mubarak -- is counting on.
Whatever comes of the Nour affair, the State Department has launched a committee to review policy toward Egypt. That will give democracy advocates at State and the White House a platform for arguing that relations with Cairo should be fundamentally shifted in the coming year. They can count on support in Congress, where key Republicans, such as Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, have grown increasingly impatient with Mubarak's refusal to liberalize.
Few believe that Mubarak can now be stopped from granting himself another term as president. But proponents of change will argue that Bush must at least push Mubarak to make a major concession to his moderate opposition. This is not a matter of the United States dictating reform: Nour, a new coalition of political groups and even some officials in the ruling party have been pressing for a constitutional rewrite that would make future elections democratic and limit the president's power and tenure. They also want lifted the "emergency laws" that Mubarak has used to suppress political activity. Bush need only embrace this homegrown agenda.
The old autocrat probably won't yield unless his annual dose of $1.2 billion in U.S. aid is put at stake. Critics have been arguing for years that that huge subsidy, which dates to the Cold War, buys the United States little but greater enmity from the millions of Arabs who loathe the region's corrupt autocracies and blame the United States for propping them up. The fact is, Mubarak has far more to lose than Bush from a rupture in U.S.-Egyptian relations. By contrast, if the dictator sails to reelection with the apparent consent of Washington, it is Bush who will be the big loser.
By Jackson Diehl
Monday, February 14, 2005; Page A17
The appearance of Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit and intelligence chief Omar Suleiman in Washington this week should bring to a head a bold attempt by their country's strongman, Hosni Mubarak, to neuter President Bush's campaign for democracy in the Middle East within weeks of his inaugural address.
Mubarak's brazen gambit was encapsulated by two events on successive days last week. On Tuesday he played host in Sharm el-Sheikh as Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas declared a cease-fire. On Wednesday his police in Cairo arrested the deputy leader of the new, liberal democratic Tomorrow political party and banned its newspaper from publishing its first issue -- even though 10 days before the Bush administration had strongly objected to the arrest of the party's chairman, Ayman Nour.
Mubarak is betting that Gheit and Suleiman will be greeted at the State Department and White House as close collaborators in a budding Israeli-Palestinian detente, not as representatives of a government engaged in an expanding crackdown on its secular and democratic opposition. If so, the 76-year-old president will feel secure in continuing a campaign aimed at crushing what has been mounting opposition among the Egyptian political and business elite to his plan to extend his quarter-century in office by six years through a rigged referendum this fall. His son, Gamal, waits in the wings to succeed him.
Bush, who in his State of the Union speech called on Egypt to "show the way" toward democracy in the Middle East, will look feckless and foolish if a regime so deeply dependent on U.S. military and economic aid stages another fraudulent election while jailing the very politicians who support his vision. But Mubarak is betting that this U.S president, like those who preceded him, won't seriously confront him or threaten his economic lifeline at a sensitive moment in the "peace process."
He may or may not be right. Some officials tell me that the Egyptians will get a cool, if not cold, reception in Washington and will be told that the jailing of Nour and his deputy, Moussa Mustafa, is unacceptable. Bush, one source said, is "furious" about the arrests. A U.S. diplomatic letter has been drafted, but not yet dispatched, to other members of the Group of Eight industrial nations; it describes Mubarak's political crackdown in harsh terms and suggests that G-8 participation in an early March meeting in Egypt with the Arab League should be reconsidered.
One official I spoke to pointed out that Condoleezza Rice is due to pay her first visit as secretary of state to the Arab Middle East for the Arab League meeting. If Nour is not freed, the official predicted, Rice may cancel the trip: "She is not going to sit there like a potted plant while the Egyptians do this." But Rice hasn't addressed the issue, and there is no consensus inside the administration on such a tough response. Predictably, the U.S. Embassy in Cairo is urging caution; it argues that an overly aggressive U.S. reaction would play into the hands of Egyptian "hard-liners." Such limp logic, of course, is exactly what the chief hard-liner -- Mubarak -- is counting on.
Whatever comes of the Nour affair, the State Department has launched a committee to review policy toward Egypt. That will give democracy advocates at State and the White House a platform for arguing that relations with Cairo should be fundamentally shifted in the coming year. They can count on support in Congress, where key Republicans, such as Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, have grown increasingly impatient with Mubarak's refusal to liberalize.
Few believe that Mubarak can now be stopped from granting himself another term as president. But proponents of change will argue that Bush must at least push Mubarak to make a major concession to his moderate opposition. This is not a matter of the United States dictating reform: Nour, a new coalition of political groups and even some officials in the ruling party have been pressing for a constitutional rewrite that would make future elections democratic and limit the president's power and tenure. They also want lifted the "emergency laws" that Mubarak has used to suppress political activity. Bush need only embrace this homegrown agenda.
The old autocrat probably won't yield unless his annual dose of $1.2 billion in U.S. aid is put at stake. Critics have been arguing for years that that huge subsidy, which dates to the Cold War, buys the United States little but greater enmity from the millions of Arabs who loathe the region's corrupt autocracies and blame the United States for propping them up. The fact is, Mubarak has far more to lose than Bush from a rupture in U.S.-Egyptian relations. By contrast, if the dictator sails to reelection with the apparent consent of Washington, it is Bush who will be the big loser.
IRAQ THE MODEL
Sunday, February 13, 2005
Democracy in progress.
Congratulations to the Iraqi people,
The results are for the best of Iraq and its future; Iraqis have put the corner stone for the state of law and constitution and have proved to the world how the region's nations are eager for freedom and how much they reject the concepts of violence and despotism that were imposed by fire and steel.
The ballot and the box have won and the purple fingers garnished the beautiful picture.
The high turnout in circumstances that were considered to be the most dangerous was like a candle that leads the road for the rest of freedom seeking people and gave lesson in courage and determination and reminds even those who lived their whole lives in democracies about the bravery of their founding fathers who struggled and sacrificed for the sake of their children's future and prosperity.
The winners are in front of a historic responsibility of drawing the future of Iraq and defining its new identity. Their load is heavy but the most important thing is that the people back them and back the writing of the permanent constitution.
I was so happy today while watching the results being displayed on TV although I didn't get the seat I dreamed of. Little parties like ours couldn't compete with the larger ones that own radio and TV networks and had their banners and posters filling the streets while I had to borrow from my friends to pay the 5000 $ registration fees of the party because the support we received for the party from our friends and supporters hasn't reached Baghdad till this moment because of some banking bureaucracy. All we had was 3000 $ to spend on advertising and publicity and managing all the party's affairs.
Add to this that the candidates of small parties had to accept risking their lives as we made ourselves easy targets for the terrorists; we don't have the adequate personal protection like the famous figures who live in heavily protected quarters and protected by hundreds of bodyguards.
While candidates like me live among the people and walk on the streets, in the past few weeks we saw several Iraqi politicians targeted and assassinated, but our participation was more important than anything else because it gave more credit to the elections and we're happy with that role.
The world will remember the number "7461"; these were the candidates who didn't submit for blackmailing and decided to take the responsibility despite the threats and the dangers.
If small parties like ours haven't participated, the elections wouldn't have succeeded the way it did.
I see that we didn't lose at all, on the contrary, we won and the only loser is terror and its dictators allies.
We will always have the chance to participate again and our voice will always be heard and we will not give up on what we started.
The political map in my opinion will witness many changes in the coming 6 months and alliances will be reshaped and the small entities will seek forming bigger masses in order to get a better representation in the future elections which are not far away.
And I believe that the major parties will try to form an alliance to balance forces with the winning list of the United Coalition which I assume will be working hard on its end to satisfy the other parties as it needs the support of the other half to pass its projects and legislations and now its obvious that the United Coalition is 'flirting' with others through messages of reassurance focusing on the idea that the United Coalition has no will to make Iraq an Islamic state and on that Islam will not be the only source of legislations in the coming constitution.
On the other hand, the SCIRI demands for respecting Islam seem reasonable and realistic more than conservative, as securing the unity of the coalition requires also reassuring the secular members of the list.
Moreover some members from the same list stated that they would like to see a Kurdish president for Iraq and in a statement for Hussein Sharistani, one of the coalition's leading figures, he said "to prove to the people that the coalition is democratic in nature, the ministers or PM that are to be chosen from our list will be elected by the 131 members and not by the elite or the big figures of the coalition".
Also there were other statements coming from inside the coalition refusing the idea of planning a withdrawal schedule for the Multinational forces from Iraq as Ibrahim Al-Jaafari said who considered that calls for a withdrawal are aiming at creating chaos and a civil war.
These statements and many similar ones refute the expectations about Iraq becoming a "copy" of Iran. All this and more proves the reasonability of the suggested choices with an invitation for open talks and negotiations.
Generally speaking, all politicians realize the role of the United States and the coalition forces in protecting the new born democracy and most of the major players realize the necessity of a strategic partnership with the United States for the good of Iraq and for the success of the war on terror.
The event of elections in Iraq was a huge turning point in the history of the region and Iraqis and their political parties have proved-despite the lack of experience-that they can do well and show high performance in a process of change that represents the first signs of a bright future for this country and the Middle east.
No one will stop the train of democracy and those who stand against the change will soon be nothing but forgotten.
Mohammed
Sunday, February 13, 2005
Democracy in progress.
Congratulations to the Iraqi people,
The results are for the best of Iraq and its future; Iraqis have put the corner stone for the state of law and constitution and have proved to the world how the region's nations are eager for freedom and how much they reject the concepts of violence and despotism that were imposed by fire and steel.
The ballot and the box have won and the purple fingers garnished the beautiful picture.
The high turnout in circumstances that were considered to be the most dangerous was like a candle that leads the road for the rest of freedom seeking people and gave lesson in courage and determination and reminds even those who lived their whole lives in democracies about the bravery of their founding fathers who struggled and sacrificed for the sake of their children's future and prosperity.
The winners are in front of a historic responsibility of drawing the future of Iraq and defining its new identity. Their load is heavy but the most important thing is that the people back them and back the writing of the permanent constitution.
I was so happy today while watching the results being displayed on TV although I didn't get the seat I dreamed of. Little parties like ours couldn't compete with the larger ones that own radio and TV networks and had their banners and posters filling the streets while I had to borrow from my friends to pay the 5000 $ registration fees of the party because the support we received for the party from our friends and supporters hasn't reached Baghdad till this moment because of some banking bureaucracy. All we had was 3000 $ to spend on advertising and publicity and managing all the party's affairs.
Add to this that the candidates of small parties had to accept risking their lives as we made ourselves easy targets for the terrorists; we don't have the adequate personal protection like the famous figures who live in heavily protected quarters and protected by hundreds of bodyguards.
While candidates like me live among the people and walk on the streets, in the past few weeks we saw several Iraqi politicians targeted and assassinated, but our participation was more important than anything else because it gave more credit to the elections and we're happy with that role.
The world will remember the number "7461"; these were the candidates who didn't submit for blackmailing and decided to take the responsibility despite the threats and the dangers.
If small parties like ours haven't participated, the elections wouldn't have succeeded the way it did.
I see that we didn't lose at all, on the contrary, we won and the only loser is terror and its dictators allies.
We will always have the chance to participate again and our voice will always be heard and we will not give up on what we started.
The political map in my opinion will witness many changes in the coming 6 months and alliances will be reshaped and the small entities will seek forming bigger masses in order to get a better representation in the future elections which are not far away.
And I believe that the major parties will try to form an alliance to balance forces with the winning list of the United Coalition which I assume will be working hard on its end to satisfy the other parties as it needs the support of the other half to pass its projects and legislations and now its obvious that the United Coalition is 'flirting' with others through messages of reassurance focusing on the idea that the United Coalition has no will to make Iraq an Islamic state and on that Islam will not be the only source of legislations in the coming constitution.
On the other hand, the SCIRI demands for respecting Islam seem reasonable and realistic more than conservative, as securing the unity of the coalition requires also reassuring the secular members of the list.
Moreover some members from the same list stated that they would like to see a Kurdish president for Iraq and in a statement for Hussein Sharistani, one of the coalition's leading figures, he said "to prove to the people that the coalition is democratic in nature, the ministers or PM that are to be chosen from our list will be elected by the 131 members and not by the elite or the big figures of the coalition".
Also there were other statements coming from inside the coalition refusing the idea of planning a withdrawal schedule for the Multinational forces from Iraq as Ibrahim Al-Jaafari said who considered that calls for a withdrawal are aiming at creating chaos and a civil war.
These statements and many similar ones refute the expectations about Iraq becoming a "copy" of Iran. All this and more proves the reasonability of the suggested choices with an invitation for open talks and negotiations.
Generally speaking, all politicians realize the role of the United States and the coalition forces in protecting the new born democracy and most of the major players realize the necessity of a strategic partnership with the United States for the good of Iraq and for the success of the war on terror.
The event of elections in Iraq was a huge turning point in the history of the region and Iraqis and their political parties have proved-despite the lack of experience-that they can do well and show high performance in a process of change that represents the first signs of a bright future for this country and the Middle east.
No one will stop the train of democracy and those who stand against the change will soon be nothing but forgotten.
Mohammed
