Like The Berlin Wall
A Lebanese insurgent leader compares the new-found democracy in Iraq to the falling of the Berlin wall in this Washington Post op/ed from David Ignatius.
Read the whole thing.
I am convinced that decades from now, despite the nay-sayers, the liberation of Iraq will be seen as a key moment, the point at which the tide turned and Islamo-facism fell back to make way for a move toward freedom and democracy.
INDC Journal has more.
(via Protein Wisdom)
The leader of this Lebanese intifada is Walid Jumblatt, the patriarch of the Druze Muslim community and, until recently, a man who accommodated Syria's occupation. But something snapped for Jumblatt last year, when the Syrians overruled the Lebanese constitution and forced the reelection of their front man in Lebanon, President Emile Lahoud. The old slogans about Arab nationalism turned to ashes in Jumblatt's mouth, and he and Hariri openly began to defy Damascus.
I dined Monday night with Jumblatt in his mountain fortress in Moukhtara, southeast of Beirut. He moved there for safety last weekend because of worries that he would be the next target of whoever killed Hariri. We sat under a portrait of Jumblatt's father, Kamal, who was assassinated in 1976 after he opposed the initial entry of Syrian troops into Lebanon. With me was Jamil Mroue, a Lebanese Shiite journalist whose own father was assassinated by Arab radicals in the 1960s. It was an evening when the ghosts of the past mingled with hopes for the future.
Jumblatt dresses like an ex-hippie, in jeans and loafers, but he maintains the exquisite manners of a Lebanese aristocrat. Over the years, I've often heard him denouncing the United States and Israel, but these days, in the aftermath of Hariri's death, he's sounding almost like a neoconservative. He says he's determined to defy the Syrians until their troops leave Lebanon and the Lahoud government is replaced.
"It's strange for me to say it, but this process of change has started because of the American invasion of Iraq," explains Jumblatt. "I was cynical about Iraq. But when I saw the Iraqi people voting three weeks ago, 8 million of them, it was the start of a new Arab world." Jumblatt says this spark of democratic revolt is spreading. "The Syrian people, the Egyptian people, all say that something is changing. The Berlin Wall has fallen. We can see it."
Read the whole thing.
I am convinced that decades from now, despite the nay-sayers, the liberation of Iraq will be seen as a key moment, the point at which the tide turned and Islamo-facism fell back to make way for a move toward freedom and democracy.
INDC Journal has more.
(via Protein Wisdom)
robert108
ellinas
Hannitized
Proof
Jvette
realitybasedbob
Neiman
Rodney Graves
