More reason's to damn bush

[dude1394]

I think those founding fathers were on to something. This new-fangled democracy thingee is contagious.


brooks

Why Not Here?
By DAVID BROOKS

Published: February 26, 2005

This is the most powerful question in the world today: Why not here? People in Eastern Europe looked at people in Western Europe and asked, Why not here? People in Ukraine looked at people in Georgia and asked, Why not here? People around the Arab world look at voters in Iraq and ask, Why not here?

Thomas Kuhn famously argued that science advances not gradually but in jolts, through a series of raw and jagged paradigm shifts. Somebody sees a problem differently, and suddenly everybody's vantage point changes.

"Why not here?" is a Kuhnian question, and as you open the newspaper these days, you see it flitting around the world like a thought contagion. Wherever it is asked, people seem to feel that the rules have changed. New possibilities have opened up.

The question is being asked now in Lebanon. Walid Jumblatt made his much circulated observation to David Ignatius of The Washington Post: "It's strange for me to say it, but this process of change has started because of the American invasion of Iraq. I was cynical about Iraq. But when I saw the Iraqi people voting three weeks ago, eight million of them, it was the start of a new Arab world."

So now we have mass demonstrations on the streets of Beirut. A tent city is rising up near the crater where Rafik Hariri was killed, and the inhabitants are refusing to leave until Syria withdraws. The crowds grow in the evenings; bathroom facilities are provided by a nearby Dunkin' Donuts and a Virgin Megastore.

The head of the Syrian Press Syndicate told The Times on Thursday: "There's a new world out there and a new reality. You can no longer have business as usual."

[dude1394]

And more: from betsy's

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Tell me this would have happened with the war in Iraq. If Mubarak means this it would really be amazing.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on Saturday ordered a revision of the country's election laws and said multiple candidates could run in the nation's presidential elections, a scenario Mubarak hasn't faced since becoming the country's leader in 1981.

In his surprise announcement, Mubarak said the country needed "more freedom and democracy," responding to critics' calls for political reform in Egypt. The possibility of a democratic election comes shortly after the historic elections in Iraq and the Palestinian territories that brought a taste of democracy to a region the United States has urged to reform.

"The election of a president will be through direct, secret balloting, giving the chance for political parties to run for the presidential elections and providing guarantees that allow more than one candidate for the people to choose among them with their own will," Mubarak said in an address broadcast live on Egyptian television.

Mubarak - who has never faced an opponent since becoming president after the 1981 assassination of Anwar Sadat - said his initiative came "out of my full conviction of the need to consolidate efforts for more freedom and democracy."

Afghanistan, Ukraine, Iraq, Palestinians, perhaps Lebanon, and now maybe Egypt. This is a trend that is very promising.

[Mavdog]

promising yes, some very promising trends.

Democratic voting isn't new to the mideast tho, Israel has had elections (with arab Israelis voting) since its inception, and Lebanon had a couple decades of it. the palestinian issues ended it in lebanon, the problem that egypt faced last time it tried a plebiscite is the people voted in islamist.

As for if we should praise Bush for a more positive view of the region's political future, not so fast. First, we as of yet don't have our troops back and the timeline remains uncertain; second there's a ton more for the Iraqis to do in the process; and third the praise comes based on the maxim "the end justifies the means", the means to be a few thousand US lives, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis lives and about $.5 Trillion.