Category Archives: Middle East

Democracy à la Dubya

Bush, Democracy, Iraq, Middle East

Democracy ala Dubya has two sections. Here are excerpts from each:

To Democratize Or Not To Democratize

In his State of the Union Address, the president branded the United States as the world’s “partner for a better life.” He also recommitted “our nation” “abroad” “to an historic, long-term goal”: seeking “the end of tyranny in our world.” To discredit those who oppose recreational, unprovoked wars, coups, and other state-sponsored global interventions, Mr. Bush deployed the “isolationist” epithet.
The president’s proselytizing is unconstitutional and has been undertaken with no real authority. If Mr. Bush is so bewitched by the demos—the rule of the many—he should try some Athenian magic on the foot soldiers who’ll be fighting and financing his schemes.
So how about a referendum on this question?

Elect A New People
While throwing money and men to Moloch, the commander in chief ignores that the Arab Street has always been more militant than its leaders… The only way Bush will get the democracy he desires in the Arab world is by dissolving the people and electing another, to paraphrase Bertold Brecht…

Blog away.

About Democracy ala Dubya, Jay Homnick of The Reform Club writes: “Ilana Mercer has summed up her recent critques of George Bush’s Middle East policy in one powerful essay wherein every word sparkles. Agree or not, not to be missed.”
There is an interesting thread at The Reform Club, to be followed here.
Thanks Jay.

Death By The West

Islam, Israel, Media, Middle East, The West

The so-called occupied territories are really disputed territory, gained due to acts of aggression by the Arab states against Israel. There was no Palestinian State in 1967 when the territories were captured. What kind of morality is it, then, to return territory to the aggressor? And where’s the precedent? It rewards aggression—and guarantees it’ll reoccur. If anything, by returning land to the aggressors—the Sinai first—Israel violated Nullum crimen sine poena, the imperative in international law to punish the aggressor. Writer William Anderson pointed out to me that had the Arabs seized parts of Israel in one of their many failed campaigns, there would be no calls to return the land. Come to think of it, before the brutal Muslim conquest, the land was Christia—Egypt, Libya, North Africa, Israel, Lebanon, Syria, and Asia Minor were Christian, not so? In Israel the West has reclaimed a small spot of sanity in a sea of savagery, where enlightened Western law prevails, and where Christians and Jews and their holy places are safe. (By the way, not once is Jerusalem mentioned in the Qur’an. Muslim fondness for Jerusalem is almost as recent, and certainly as innovative, as the discovery of Palestinian nationhood.) Yet, what is the West feverishly fighting for? The utter emasculation of Israel. The Bully Bush administration is now talking about Israel’s return to the 1949 “Armistice lines.” Amazing—and all the more so when such “thinking” is applauded by paleoconservatives (and by many libertarians). Aren’t they forever decrying the Death of the West? Paleocons certainly stood firm behind the Christian side in Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Chechnya, Cyprus, Sudan, East Timor and Kashmir. And so they ought to have: Muslims have wiped out entire Christian communities in these places, not that the strongmen in power or the talking twits on television have noticed. Yet you’ll often hear paleoconservatives condemn Condi R. and Genghis B. for leaning on, say, Vladimir Putin; but celebrate when they sunder Israel’s sovereignty. It is becoming apparent that to some, bringing about the end of Israel is well worth the deadly price of reviving and consolidating a caliphate. There’s a word for that (besides insanity).