Countdown

Hope Amidst Fragments

By AAI
Volume 9, No. 6
Posted on Friday February 15, 2008

Hope Amidst Fragments
In anticipation of the third anniversary of the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, presidential candidate and member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Barack Obama quietly submitted to the Congressional Record a thoughtful, timely plea for Lebanese reconciliation, cautioning that "to neglect Lebanon would not only serve our interests badly, it would fail a nation whose people have suffered too much for too long." Senator Obama insisted that "we cannot stand idly by as an emerging democracy whose people have long ties to the United States teeters on the verge of collapse," and reiterated the need to "work with our European and Arab allies to foster a new Lebanese consensus around a stable and democratic Lebanon." We hold out hope that the fragments, some day, become one nation.

Don’t Tread On Me
"President Bush is rarely as vivid about the specter of terrorism as he is when he’s trying to stampede Congress into doing something it should think twice about," notes an editorial  in Thursday’s USA Today. A bipartisan Senate majority almost handed the administration a major victory Tuesday by amending the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to both include immunity for eavesdropping telecoms and expand governmental spying powers. Reassured that intelligence gathering would continue undisrupted under current provisions, the House successfully tempered the debate Wednesday, siding with sentiments that "crucial decisions about civil liberties in an age of terror shouldn’t be driven by fear-mongering." Constitution, 1-Bush administration, 0. At least for now.

Whither Annapolis?
Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyed was in Washington this week, meeting with U.S. officials and shoring up support for the fledging Annapolis peace process. Between carefully crafted speeches at the National Press Club, sponsored by American Task Force for Palestine, and the Aspen Institute, Fayyed gave a more candid assessment to a Washington Post reporter about actual progress between the governments of Israel and Palestine. "We have good meetings, friendly meetings. A lot of promises of, ‘We will think about this, this makes sense,’" he said. "I am happy when somebody tells you you are making sense. I would be a damn lot happier when I see things begin to happen." Fayyed later clarified that he did not mean to insult, but that "this is the reality. I [was] just trying to state it as it is."

A Very Clear Choice
After Senator John McCain emerged from the Super-Duper-Tuesday contests as the undisputable Republican frontrunner, his campaign made a quick pivot to the general election. In a speech to GOP loyalists at CPAC, McCain highlighted the major differences between himself and both Democratic contenders, stating that "Senator Clinton and Senator Obama will withdraw our forces from Iraq based on an arbitrary timetable designed for the sake of political expediency." Highlighting his own status as a genuine American war hero, McCain explained his rationale for staying the proverbial course: "I know that the costs in lives and treasure we would incur should we fail in Iraq will be far greater than the heartbreaking losses we have suffered to date. And I will not allow that to happen."

Courting Independents
Rami Khoury explained recently in Lebanon’s The Daily Star that "any open-eyed traveler around the [Middle East] must recognize that the Arab world cannot long enjoy warfare, political standoffs, stability, prosperity and polarization at the same time." Khoury explains that "George W. Bush’s triumphalist neoconservative unilateral militarism, and Osama bin Laden’s neo-nihilistic globalized Salafist terrorism," the two most dominant ideologies currently competing for Arab hearts and minds, "have both failed to take root", but without a sustainable alternative, extremism will "remain attractive to some, in the absence of accountable, decent governance."