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COMMENTARY
March 9, 2005
Feeding the wave
How many times have I had to tell you gentle reader to read anything President Bush says. There was a joke made by the louche webloggist Wonkette to the effect that the Bush administration has been sadly lacking in empty gestures. The President not only seems to mean almost everything he says he seems to act on it soon after. This is as my reader must agree very eccentric behaviour in a politician. I'm not saying Mr. Bush utters deathless prose; I'm just saying read his texts if you want some clue to what is going to happen next. (Always archived at whitehouse.gov.) This instruction applies particularly to his address yesterday to the U.S. National Defence University in Fort McNair near Washington. It contained several dozen hints that the U.S. would now be accelerating in its engagement with the Middle East. It also contained one pregnant little dropped allegation of fact: that the U.S. government is convinced the recent terror blast in Tel Aviv was ordered from Damascus not from the usual sources on the Palestinian West Bank. More was being said through that than meets the ear. Mr. Bush was not only telling Bashir Assad the Syrian dictator that he has drawn a bead on him. He was signalling beyond this that the U.S. is no longer interested in keeping what happens to Israel in a separate file from what happens elsewhere. He was thus subtly insinuating "peace with Israel" into the agenda of Arabs and other Muslims demonstrating for democracy in spreading waves throughout the region. Now turning to those let's take three items I noticed in yesterday's news glancing through the Internet: In Kuwait the parliament is speeding work on a bill to give the vote to women and allow them to stand as political candidates (as in Iraq and Afghanistan) while several hundred women activists hold vigil outside. From the pictures I've seen few of these ladies were wearing the proper head covering. In Cairo protesters for an opposition party are telling President Mubarak they are not entirely happy with his plan to let other candidates run in Egypt's next presidential election. This is because after reading the small print they think any such election will be rigged. They think that perhaps if Mr. Mubarak and his anointed son were neither of them candidates in such a next election it might have more chance of being free and fair. In Multan Pakistan several thousand women rallied in defence of the rights of Mukhtar Mai a woman who was gang-raped probably on the orders of a village council. There are many more reports of demonstrations from Morocco to Pakistan but I chose these three because I've now seen photographs. What struck me in each case was the mixing together of well-dressed middle-class respectable people -- of the type who normally calculate they have too much to lose by yelling in the street -- with poorer and more ragged people. And shoulder to shoulder in the same causes. And each cause was for its location a direct affront not only to the powers-that-be but to their most basic attitudes. I don't think any of these demonstrations would have happened without the extensive television coverage now spreading through the Arab and Islamic world of Lebanon and Iraq. Several of my correspondents in the region have pointed out that Al Jazeera's "pro-terrorist" coverage in Iraq has backfired because Arabs watching the footage of anti-government demonstrations take away a powerful impression that such demonstrations should be possible. The subtext is more eloquent than the text in these cases. For yes Al Jazeera often only covers people marching against America and her allies. But also yes the Americans and their "running dogs" also permit such protests. Viewers know their own dictators permit no such thing. Or rather have only started allowing that sort of thing as a way to release pressures that their police forces tell them are building quickly everywhere. As I've said before the reason the large flag-waving anti-Syrian demonstrations have been happening in Beirut is not because the occupying Assad regime has suddenly gone soft. It doesn't have the option of going soft; no dictatorship does. These people are rallying because after Afghanistan and Iraq they believe the United States Mediterranean fleet now offers them real cover. And they' re watching the Assad regime pulling back tanks and troops towards the Bekaa Valley and the Syrian frontier chiefly because President Bush is publicly and plainly telling them to pull back. Many American flags have been waved among the Lebanese ones by the demonstrators. What Mr. Bush was saying yesterday over the shoulders of his audience to the people campaigning for freedom and democracy across the Islamic world was in my paraphrase: "You are right to think you have the full support of my people government and military. The freedom bell is ringing do not hesitate to rise." David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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