Juan Cole: Bush's Cedar Revolution Collapses in Yet Another Policy Failure

[RedEarth]

The assassination of Lebanese cabinet minister Pierre Gemayel on Tuesday has thrown that country further into yet more turmoil.

The crisis is a further testament to the bankruptcy of George W. Bush's Middle East policy. Under the dishonest rhetoric of 'democratization,' what Bush has really been about is creating pro-American winners and anti-American losers in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon. Bush's vision is not democratic because he always installs a tyranny of the majority. The vanquished are to be crushed and ridiculed, the victors to exult in their triumph. It is like a Leni Riefenstahl film.

The problem is that when you crush the Pushtuns of Afghanistan, who traditionally ruled the country, they have means of hitting back (ask the Canadian troops in Qandahar). When you crush the Sunni Arabs of Iraq, who had traditionally ruled Iraq, they have ways of organizing a guerrilla movement and acting as spoilers of Bush's new Kurdish-Shiite axis in Baghdad. When you crush Hamas even after they won the elections in early 2006, they have means of continuing to struggle.

In Lebanon, Bush egged on the pro-Hariri movement against the Syrians and their allies. Then he egged on Israel to bomb the Shiites of southern Lebanon (and, mysteriously, the rest of Lebanon, too). So he tried to create the March 14th alliance around Hariri as the winners who take all in Lebanon.

So obviously there will be trouble about this. Everything Bush touches turns to ashes, bombings, assassinations. He doesn't know how to compromise and he doesn't know how to influence his neo-colonial possessions so that they can compromise.


http://www.juancole.com/2006/11/bushs-cedar-revolution-collapses-in.html