From the Financial Times this morning:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/e238f950-2015-11dc-9eb1-000b5df10621.htmlFreedom suffers in backlash to Bush agendaBy Roula Khalaf
Published: June 21 2007 18:14 | Last updated: June 21 2007 18:14
Summer 2005 was a high point in the Bush administration’s “freedom agenda”, as stirrings of democracy appeared across the Arab world. Three examples were held up as models: Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories.
In the first two, new governments had emerged from the ranks of the former oppositions, establishing a rare alternation of power, and, in the third, a new, moderate Palestinian president was elected with a reform agenda.
Two years on, all three are in deep turmoil, offering negative models of democracy and threatening to entrench the authoritarianism still prevalent elsewhere.
Analysts say other regimes now point to the three as examples of what the Arab world should avoid, in the process giving themselves a further pretext to maintain the status quo.
“All three places that were celebrated as important successes in the democracy campaign are now the most terrifying to people,” says Shibley Telhami, analyst at Washington’s Brookings Institution and an expert on Arab public opinion. “Democracy’s been given a bad name.”...more at
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/e238f950-2015-11dc-9eb1-000b5df10621.html Thanks, dubya. Thanks a $^#@! lot.