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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (681367)	5/2/2005 4:14:49 PM
From: tonto	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

Petri has a very good solution...

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (681367)	5/2/2005 4:33:38 PM
From: Wayners	Respond to of 769667

It still amounts to theft.

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (681367)	5/2/2005 5:26:09 PM
From: Hope Praytochange	Respond to of 769667

Lebanon's Victory Syria leaves. Now, on to democracy. Saturday, April 30, 2005 12:01 a.m. Syrian soldiers flashed victory signs as the last of them withdrew from Lebanon this week. But no show of bravado can disguise the fact that the victory was Lebanon's and that it came at the expense of Syria, Lebanon's occupier for nearly 30 years. In a letter to the U.N., Syria notes that its departure puts the country in compliance with Security Council Resolution 1559, passed last September at the urging of the U.S. and France, and claims that the withdrawal "was primarily dictated by Syria's unwavering commitment to the charter of the United Nations and its resolutions." The reality, of course, is that Syria strenuously opposed the resolution when it was proposed, declared it a failure when it passed and ignored it until the combination of Lebanese and international pressure for withdrawal made its position untenable. It took the assassination in Beirut of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri two months ago to set into motion the events that led to withdrawal. And yet, even after Hariri's murder and the anti-Syrian protests that swept the country, many so-called realists said that rapid Syrian withdrawal was too much to expect. Syria had too much at stake economically and politically, the conventional wisdom went, to really loosen its grip on its longtime client state to the west. Flynt Leverett, former director of Middle Eastern Affairs at the National Security Council, wrote in a New York Times op-ed that the U.S. "should recognize that an expansion of political openness will unfold over years, rather than weeks or months; it will need to proceed cautiously to avoid a re-emergence of sectarian violence." Well, so much for that theory. In the wake of the Syrian withdrawal, Major General Jamil Sayyed, one of Syria's enforcers within Lebanon's security forces, tendered his resignation, according to AP. Syria's departure and the collapse of its control over Lebanon's security services paves the way for parliamentary elections next month, which now have a fighting chance of being free and fair. Hezbollah remains a force in the country. As the last of the Lebanese militias to disarm, it still threatens to be a disruptive force as Lebanon moves back toward democracy after three decades of civil war and occupation. But cut off from its Syrian sponsors, Hezbollah may yet find that its welcome, at least as an armed group, has worn thin. In all this, President Bush deserves a large portion of the credit, not that his critics will grant it. It is unlikely the Cedar Revolution would have taken place when and how it did without the example of Iraq's elections. The President's diplomatic and rhetorical support also proved crucial. That's not to say the world can rest easy about Lebanon. The country remains religiously fractious and politically fragile. But if we've learned one thing from this experience, it is that the Arab world isn't resistant to democratic change, but ripe for it.