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Editor's Note:
Can anyone really dispute the notion that the US has no
commitment to democracy? Being committed to democracy
means supporting the decisions of the people, whether
you agree or disagree with the outcome.
Europe and the US did not accept Palestinian democracy
because the election fell to the side they did not want
to win.
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do when you learn some simple and easy-to-follow tips.
Living Green
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Video Clip Of The Week
Brzezinski Says US May Provoke War with Iran
Zbigniew Brzezinski is indirectly accusing Bush
administration of preparing a provocation or even a false
flag terrorist act in order to have a pretext to attack
Iran.
View: Brzezinski Says US May Provoke War with Iran
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Fading U.S. Agenda Evokes Arab Scorn-By Alistair Lyon
Western backing for the legally disputed emergency
government of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has
demolished any lingering Arab belief that U.S. President
George W. Bush's "freedom agenda" is going anywhere.
Both critics and advocates of the sweeping goals he laid
out for his second term in 2005 agree that power politics
and the "war on terrorism" have trumped democratic
principles.
They say this was clear from the moment the United States
and the European Union boycotted the government set up by
Hamas in March 2006 after the Islamists trounced Abbas's
Fatah faction in free elections that Washington had
insisted go ahead.
"That was the hair in the soup in terms of the democracy
agenda," said Lebanese commentator Michael Young, who had
supported Bush's thesis that invading Iraq in 2003 would
undermine undemocratic Arab regimes elsewhere.
"The U.S. response (to Hamas's election win) was: 'we'll
accept democracy but not if it means the other side can
win'."
Now, Washington has embraced as "legitimate" the cabinet
Abbas named after Hamas routed his Fatah forces in Gaza
on June 14. The EU also endorsed Abbas's actions as
constitutional.
Yet the main authors of the Palestinian constitution, or
Basic Law, say Abbas has exceeded his powers and needs the
approval of parliament to keep the government in place.
Many Palestinians feel the West had already trampled on
their democracy in its rush to isolate Hamas for its
refusal to recognize Israel, abandon violence or accept
past peace accords.
"The Palestinians were immediately rewarded by the
'democracies' of the world with an unprecedented crippling
siege as a punishment for the exercise of their democratic
right," Anis al-Qasem, who led the framing of Basic Law,
said this week.
SELECTIVE PRINCIPLES?
Across the Middle East, foes of the West accuse it of
double standards. Arab reformers say U.S. actions undercut
their cause.
"Issues of legality and legitimacy are completely
irrelevant in U.S. eyes," said Rami Khouri, a Beirut-based
commentator. These values had been sidelined in a U.S.-led
struggle with two distinct groups -- "al Qaeda terrorist
types" and mainstream Islamists engaged at least partly
in electoral politics, such as Hamas, Lebanon's Hezbollah
and the Muslim Brotherhood, he added.
Bush still cites his democracy agenda as a basis for
policy.
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"I firmly believe that you'll see the democracy movement
continue to advance throughout the Middle East if the
United States doesn't become isolationist," he said on
Thursday.
Despite the chaos in Iraq, he said his country must keep
fighting there to win a wider battle against "radicals and
extremists who want to impose their dark vision" on the
world.
While penalizing the elected Hamas government, Bush lauds
Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora for defending a
"young democracy" against Hezbollah and its patrons, Syria
and Iran. But Hezbollah, while fielding an anti-Israel
guerrilla force, also belongs to a strong parliamentary
opposition of Christian and Shi'ite factions that
challenges the legitimacy of the cabinet backed by
Siniora's Sunni, Christian and Druze bloc.
In practice, analysts say, Washington has eased whatever
post-9/11 pressure for reform it had exerted on countries
like Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan because it wants
their help in confronting Iran's nuclear ambitions and
stabilizing Iraq.
REALITY MUGS RHETORIC
"The Bush administration's policy toward democracy in the
Muslim countries is essentially bankrupt," former State
Department official David Mack, who is now Vice President
of the Middle East Institute in Washington, told Reuters.
Bush's pledge in his 2005 inaugural speech to promote
reform by making U.S. relations with other countries hinge
on "the decent treatment of their own people" had proved
untenable.
"It never could have happened," Mack said. "All we did,
from the point of view of democracy advocates, was raise
unachievable expectations and behave in a hypocritical
manner."
Bush said the United States would keep reminding its
Middle East allies that "we want them to work toward
freer societies". But such ideals had never been the sole
driver of U.S. policy, Young argued. "Even in 2003 when
they went into Iraq, there was always a large element of
power politics.
"If the Americans had succeeded, the democracy agenda
would have been a powerful instrument... but they proved
incompetent." Far more Arabs would argue that invading and
occupying Iraq, with its echoes of Israeli occupation of
Palestinian lands, fatally compromised any prospects of
igniting liberty elsewhere.
Arab mistrust of U.S. policy is now so deep that dissidents
in countries like Syria have to expend much energy
dissociating themselves from it to retain any credibility
at home.
With the EU largely following Washington's lead, notably
towards Hamas, Arab reformers feel their struggle may be
forlorn if the West is willing to tolerate corrupt,
authoritarian rulers as long as they are U.S.-friendly
and cooperative on terrorism.
"The international community has to decide: are we going to
barter reforms and democracy for pro-Western (governments)?"
asked Khalil Gebara, of the Lebanese Transparency
Association.
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