Empire Notes

A number of events have come together in time and space, to be suddenly christened as an outbreak of democracy in the Middle East.

They include Palestinian elections, the first since 1996, occasioned by Arafat’s death and the need to replace him; the Iraqi elections, forced on the United States by the iron will of Ayatollah Sistani; municipal elections in Saudi Arabia in which half the municipal councils are still royally appointed and where women couldn’t vote; Hosni Mubarak’s agreement, supposedly in response to a snub by Condoleezza Rice, to allow opposition candidates in the upcoming presidential election, something intended to be a meaningless concession, since said candidates have to be approved by the Mubarak-dominated parliament and “emergency” security measures like the prohibition of more than five people assembling in public without permission are still in sway; and the mass demonstrations in Lebanon after the assassination of Rafik Hariri, which have already caused the Syrian-dominated government to collapse and which, in conjunction with massive pressure from the United States, have led to Syria’s agreement to begin a phased withdrawal from Lebanon.

It is, in fact, rather interesting that this last example is being touted as a democratic development here in the United States, just as the mass protests in Ukraine that led to new elections were as well. Normally, our political system and our political commentators, to say the least, look askance at unregulated mass protest that contravenes the all-important regulations that provide for public order and that transcends accepted legal procedures, no matter how stupid those procedures might be.

For example, somehow, no fanfare has accompanied the remarkable developments in Bolivia. 17 months ago, President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada was forced to resign by massive protest over a proposed gas deal which would give Bolivia minimal royalties while securing large profits for U.S. corporations. Now, his vice president and replacement, Carlos Mesa, has also announced he will resign, again after protests spearheaded by the Movement to Socialism, an organization headed by the indigenous leader Evo Morales. A striking manifestation of people power and democratic culture, in a country that has been plagued by over 190 coups since 1825.

Events in Bolivia do seem to involve a large section of the country and the interests of the non-elite masses. In Lebanon, on the other hand, which, of course, had democratic elections long before the events of the past few months, these demonstrations have a clear ethnic sectarian character. Headed by Maronite Christians, Druze, and some Sunni Muslims, the so-called opposition is paying little or no attention to the desires of the hundreds of thousands of Shi’a. Many of them support Hezbollah, a militant organization and political party with ties to Syria that is the only Arab military ever to force an Israeli withdrawal from territory it occupies

They are also paying no attention to the spirit of the Ta’if accords of 1990 and the ensuing Syrian-Lebanese agreement. It is true that Syria has violated those accords repeatedly and that its recent assertion of political hegemony over the Lebanese government is illegitimate; it is also true that those accords recognize that Israeli expansionism is a severe threat to Lebanon and accept some Syrian military presence in Lebanon in order to deter Israel. The power vacuum being created by simultaneous collapse of the Lebanese government and withdrawal of Syrian troops could well act as a red flag in front of the Israeli bull.

Also not being considered is America’s wider war. The Bush administration’s recent saber-rattling at Syria seems to stem from a conviction, with just as much evidence as they had on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, that the Iraqi resistance is being funded, organized, and run from Syria. They have seized on the Hariri assassination, which has absolutely no traceable links to the Syrian government, to try to destabilize the Syrian government and further the neoconservatives’ dreams of American-dominated regime change.

If this supposed outbreak of democracy leads to more imperial machinations by the United States and Israel and, as the LA Times reports this morning, a muting of congressional criticism of Bush administration policy, the people who suffer the most for it will be the very people of the Middle East now justly being celebrated for their political courage.