Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dale Baker who wrote (25951)	8/7/2006 3:46:38 AM
From: Dale Baker	Respond to of 541654

'The US is the kiss of death' in the Arab world By Jim Lobe Aug 5, 2006 atimes.com WASHINGTON - After almost four weeks of fighting between Lebanon's Hezbollah militia and Israel, the US administration's ambitions to transform the Arab Middle East into a pro-Western, more democratic region are fading fast. Not only is Washington's thus far staunch support for Israel losing Arab "hearts and minds" at an astonishing pace, but the "moderate" governments and non-governmental forces the administration had hoped would act as catalysts for reform are increasingly isolated across the region, according to Middle East specialists. "I have never seen the United States being so demonized or savaged by Arab commentators, by Arab politicians," Hisham Melham, veteran Washington correspondent for Lebanon's An-Nahar newspaper, told a conference this week at the Brookings Institution, an influential think-tank. "People are clinging to Hezbollah, clinging to Hamas, because they see them as the remaining voices or forces in the Arab world that are resisting what they see as an ongoing hegemonic American-Israeli plan to control the region," he said. Shibley Telhami, an expert on Arab public opinion at the University of Maryland, observed at the same meeting, "Right now, the United States is the kiss of death. "If you really are trying to empower the ruling elites and nudge them to reform and be more representative, you have to deliver policies that are going to empower," he said. "What we see in Lebanon is a policy that is not empowering them. It is widening the gap [between the moderate elites and the people], and people are moving toward the militants."