JUSIPER

 
Juan Cole close reads SOTU

Posted by Sini

A fragment:

Moreover, elections in Iraq and Afghanistan, Lebanon and Egypt are not a "new chapter." They've had parliamentary elections before. Lebanon has been having them for decades, and they've often been pretty representative. In Iraq and Afghanistan foreign interference had a lot to do with the rise of subsequent dictatorships. This idea that the Middle East is a blank slate that never knew what a parliament was before Bush and Cheney showed up is insulting. And, calling the government set up under imperial auspices after an illegal invasion "self-government" is laughable.

Finally, the elections that Bush trumpets in all four countries, and in Palestine, which he did not mention in this regard, were rebukes to Bush, not affirmations of him. The Afghans elected warlords, the Iraqis put in the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq and Muqtada al-Sadr's people (the ones who killed Cindy Sheehan's son) along with the Iraqi Muslim Brotherhood and some Baathists. The Shiite parties of Hizbullah and Amal have new weight in Lebanon. The fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt got 88 seats, an unprecedentedly large number.

And in case you missed it, please make a point of reading Cole's ten predictions for 2006. It's short, and, I fear, prescient, although a month into the new year it now seems he was too optimistic about the Israel-Palestine situation.

6:55 PM |