Indifference
David Ignatius has a column in today's Washington Post that really troubles me. He spends a lot of time exploring the routine use of violence and assassination in Lebanon and the Middle East in general. There is real pain expressed in what he writes. But then, at the end, comes the expression that bothers me so much: "It's not our problem".
I fell in love with Lebanon the first time I visited the country 26 years ago. Part of its appeal, inevitably, was the sense of living on the edge — in a land of charming, piratical characters who cherish their freedom. Lebanon has great newspapers, outspoken intellectuals, a wide-open democracy. It has almost everything a great society needs, in fact, except the rule of law.
Many of the assassins' victims have been colleagues or people I knew as a reporter: Bashir Gemayel, Rafiq al-Hariri, Samir Kassir, Gebran Tueni. I pick up the paper some days wondering who will be next. Among my Lebanese friends, it's commonplace to speak of an assassinated father or son. These brave people live every day in the sights of the assassins. They inhabit a culture of death, yet they go on bravely, robustly — heroically, to my eyes.
The sickness must end. The people of the Middle East are destroying themselves, literally and figuratively, with the politics of assassination. So many things are going right in the modern world — until we reach the boundaries of the Middle East, where the gunmen hide in wait. Those who imagined they could stop the assassins' little guns with their big guns — the United States and Israel come to mind — have been undone by the howling gale of violence. In trying to fight the killers, they began to make their own arguments for assassination and torture. That should have been a sign that something had gone wrong.
….
The idea that America is going to save the Arab world from itself is seductive, but it's wrong. We have watched in Iraq an excruciating demonstration of our inability to stop the killers. We aren't tough enough for it or smart enough — and in the end it isn't our problem. The hard work of building a new Middle East will be done by the Arabs, or it won't happen. What would be unforgivable would be to assume that, in this part of the world, the rule of law is inherently impossible.
So, throw up our hands and walk away? They can't be saved from their own base instincts? They aren't worth the effort? Just withdraw precipitously; the bloodbath that follows, and it will follow as surely as night follows day, can't be stopped because it is just their particular sickness? At one time this nation believed in the spread of freedom and the defense of democracy. Winston Churchill once said that democracy was the worst form of government – except for all the others. Maybe it should be rephrased. Trying to spread democracy is the worst idea in the world. Except for all the others.
UPDATE: Jules Crittenden points out that rather than throwing our hands up, we might better be lending a hand. To Lebanon. And offering the back of our hand to Syria in the process.
Media, War, World news | Gaius November 24, 2006
Other Links to this Post
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Doug Ross @ Journal — November 24, 2006 @ 7:53 am
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Blue Crab Boulevard » Polar Opposite — November 24, 2006 @ 8:23 am
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A Blog For All — November 25, 2006 @ 10:34 am
By Arlo, November 24, 2006 @ 10:14 am
Ignatius lost me in the first paragraph when he says “even the Israelis.” Israel has had a longstanding state policy of assassination. David Ignatius shocked! Shocked! that there are assassinations going on.
By daveinboca, November 25, 2006 @ 1:01 pm
Lebanon must be supported and its democracy defended.
Of course, assassins will continue to murder the opponents of Syrian autocracy or Hezbollah terror [or the Syrian-based Hamas terrorist Kamel Mishaal].
At the same time, it is predictable that the UN’s “Investigative Inquiry” will submerge as the evidence and counter-evidence that crime forensics in the Muddled East produces surround the process. Professional assassins [remember the art form was invented in its derivation from "hashishiim" who killed the enemies of the Old Man of the Mountain while stoned] know how to cover their tracks as part of their metier and when caught, assassins tend to die quickly and unexplainably, so as not to reveal their paymasters. Although Islam did have a cultural flowering from 850-1258, the political/economic trajectory of the Middle East has been downward relative to its neighbors since then. And one of the reasons for the Arab caliphs cession of their ascendancy to the Turks was that Arab caliphs rarely died a peaceful death. The Turks were able to counter this murderous tendency by killing all the brother-relatives of the Ottoman Caliph at his accession, and before that accession, sequestering them in the so-called Golden Cage. Read Lord Kinross’s Ottoman Centuries for the details.
Ike landed in Lebanon in ‘58 to defend democracy, as did Reagan in the ’80s, to terrible consequences. But the US has to be the bulwark of democracy since the Euroweenies appear intent on cutting deals and electing Spanish surrender-monkeys rather than face the consequences of defeatism.