"George W. Bush has unleashed a tsunami on this region," a shrewd Kuwaiti merchant who knows the way of his world said to me. The man had no patience with the standard refrain that Arab reform had to come from within, that a foreign power cannot alter the age-old ways of the Arabs.
"Everything here--the borders of these states, the oil explorations that remade the life of this world, the political outcomes that favored the elites now in the saddle--came from the outside. This moment of possibility for the Arabs is no exception." A Jordanian of deep political experience at the highest reaches of Arab political life had no doubt as to why history suddenly broke in Lebanon, and could conceivably change in Syria itself before long. "The people in the streets of Beirut knew that no second Hama is possible; they knew that the rulers were under the gaze of American power, and knew that Bush would not permit a massive crackdown by the men in Damascus."
Wonderful eagle-eye, that Pastorius, and this is inspiring.
Chimpy McHitler, they call him on the internet.
Our postmodern Western world is blind to the universe of possibilities. How the underqualified C-student child-of-privilege George W. Bush became the visionary of the Western World is beyond me. (The less prudent and worldly call it a miracle.)
The phrase "reality-based community" became a self-definition for our friends on the left, in reaction to this quote from an anonymous White House staffer:
"We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality...we'll act again, creating other new realities..."
Now, this was taken as some neo-con psychosis, but how different is it from Bobby Kennedy?
"There are those that look at things the way they are, and ask, 'Why?' I dream of things that never were, and ask 'Why not?'"
Actually, Bush didn't have the vainglory to dream of things that never were; more like he wanted to help the things that already are to blossom. The desire for freedom and to be rid of tyranny goes back to at least the ancient Greeks, and no doubt further. I'm certain our real Vietnam mistake was that the Vietnamese were not offered freedom, only a slightly less abusive tyranny than that of the Viet Cong. All things considered, people go with the locals.
Bush isn't LBJ. And these Straussian neo-cons aren't the paranoid WWII generation who (properly) feared world totalitarianism.
Bush's belief in the "consent of the governed" means that he and his evil advisors have learned the lessons of history. The Cedar Revolution in Lebanon tells us about the universal hunger for freedom.
The idea that Syria hasn't bathed the streets of Beirut with blood to preserve their little empire because they're afraid of George Bush rings true with me.
In 1982, the Syrians killed 25,000 people who hungered for freedom in one night (the "Hama"). The only difference I can see is C-student cowboy George Dubya Chimp on the world stage, being as reality-based as all get-out.
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