ON RE-FRAMING THE MID-EAST CRISIS (PART II)

HIJACKED DEMOCRACIES

Continuing the previous post on the current mid-east crisis, NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman offers a very useful way to think about what's happening to the barely budding election-driven democracy  initiatives in Iraq, Lebanon, and the Palestinian territories, thanks to the efforts of Syria and Iran.  The piece is titled "The Kidnapping of Democracy"...more here:

"What we are seeing in Iraq, the Palestinian territories and Lebanon is an effort by Islamist parties to use elections to pursue their long-term aim of Islamizing the Arab-Muslim world.

This is not a conflict about Palestinian or Lebanese prisoners in Israel. This is a power struggle within Lebanon, Palestine and Iraq over who will call the shots in their newly elected “democratic’’ governments and whether they will be real democracies."

He then goes on to lay it out more clearly:

"The tiny militant wing of Hamas today is pulling all the strings of Palestinian politics, the Iranian-backed Hezbollah Shiite Islamic party is doing the same in Lebanon, even though it is a small minority in the cabinet, and so, too, are the Iranian-backed Shiite parties and militias in Iraq. They are not only showing who is boss inside each new democracy, but they are also competing with one another for regional influence.

As a result, the post-9/11 democracy experiment in the Arab-Muslim world is being hijacked. Yes, basically free and fair elections were held in Lebanon, the Palestinian territories and Iraq. Yes, millions turned out to vote because the people of the Arab-Muslim world really do want to shape their own futures.

But the roots of democracy are so shallow in these places and the moderate majorities so weak and intimidated that we are getting the worst of all worlds. We are getting Islamist parties who are elected to power, but who insist on maintaining their own private militias and refuse to assume all the responsibilities of a sovereign government. They refuse to let their governments have control over all weapons. They refuse to be accountable to international law (the Lebanese-Israeli border was ratified by the U.N.), and they refuse to submit to the principle that one party in the cabinet cannot drag a whole country into war."

He then goes on to provide some outside perspective:

"“Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinians all held democratic elections,’’ said the Israeli political theorist Yaron Ezrahi, “and the Western expectation was that these elections would produce legitimate governments that had the power to control violence and would assume the burden of responsibility of governing. ... But what happened in all three places is that we [produced] governments which are sovereign only on paper, but not over a territory.’’

He could have also been describing another country that's also held elections recently, but that's not featured in this op-ed:  Afghanistan (remember them?)

The piece then goes on to ask and answer the obvious question that falls out from this state of affairs:

"Why don’t the silent majorities punish these elected Islamist parties for working against the real interests of their people? Because those who speak against Hamas or Hezbollah are either delegitimized as “American lackeys’’ or just murdered, like Rafiq Hariri, the former Lebanese prime minister."

Here's the punch-line:

"The world needs to understand what is going on here: the little flowers of democracy that were planted in Lebanon, Iraq and the Palestinian territories are being crushed by the boots of Syrian-backed Islamist militias who are desperate to keep real democracy from taking hold in this region and Iranian-backed Islamist militias desperate to keep modernism from taking hold."

Overall, it's a sobering analysis, and very important to keep in mind as we watch the crisis through the filters of the mainstream media.  Recommended.

Comments

[Anonymous Coward]

Michael,
Funny how quiet the "blogworld" is on the topics of Israel and the recent activities.

Very, very few of the "A List Bloggers" are talking or commenting on any of it.

Yet, they don't hold back to urge everyone to go watch an unscientific movie by Al Gore.

[mark slater]

well as usual i think too many are way of the mark.

How many people here in the US really understand the origins of this?

read this and then tell me what we are supporting please?

http://www.ifamericansknew.org/history/index.html

[V]

Gr8 Site, Mark Slater! Thanks! Mega Bookmark!