A readout from Robert Scheer on regional reactions to Bush's radio address:
"The current crisis is part of a larger struggle between the forces of freedom and the forces of terror in the Middle East," Bush said Monday. "When democracy spreads in the Middle East, the people of that troubled region will have a better future." Apparently, Bush is unclear on the fact that Lebanon's prime minister -- elected after the country's celebrated "cedar revolution" -- has condemned the uncritical support provided by the United States for Israel since this conflagration began. Or that Hezbollah is an important part of that democratic government because of its popularity among the Shiite Muslims of southern Lebanon. Bush's neoconservative foreign-policy cabal argued that troublesome regimes, such as that of Saddam Hussein, could be easily transformed into pliable, West-leaning democracies. Instead, the opposite has happened. Throughout the region, elections hyped by Bush have turned out to be a vehicle for the expression of religion-fueled rage against Israel and its U.S. sponsor.
Even the elected leaders in "liberated" Iraq are denouncing Israel and the United States. On Monday, the Iraqi prime minister appeared at a memorial service in which he and other speakers condemned Israel. Grand Ayatollah Ali al Sistani, the most important leader in post-Hussein Iraq, broke from his usually circumspect public statements to denounce this "outrageous crime," while Moqtada al Sadr, leader of the country's most powerful militia and a key parliamentary bloc, railed against "the ominous trio of the United States, Israel and Britain, which is terrorizing Iraq, Lebanon, Afghanistan and other occupied nations." |
