This Fareed Zakaria column complaining about the slowness of political progress in Iraq put me to mind of this article I read last week about Belgium.
What’s the connection between a small, stable democracy in Europe and a big, unstable proto-democracy in the Middle East? It may not be obvious at first glance. But it seems that not so far beneath Belgium’s placid surface lurks some major discord. In fact, it has taken Belgian politicians nine months since the last general election to finally settle on a new prime minister. That is largely due to frictions between the Francophone majority and the Fleming minority.
As the Financial Times reports:
These frictions between the country’s regions were at the heart of an embarrassing 192-day political impasse after the election. At the height of the post-poll deadlock, the longest in the country’s history, there were fears that Belgium might even split in two.
If even boring old Belgium finds it hard to reach an amicable accord between differing ethnic groups, imagine how much harder the task is in Iraq, where it’s literally a matter of life or death. Zakaria is right that ethno-sectarian tensions remain a major problem in Iraq, though I think he is wrong to say that the situation has “not improved much.” While he can quibble about the details, there is no doubt that the Iraqi parliament has passed some important reconciliation laws. Even without the passage of a hydrocarbon law, moreover, the central government still manages to share oil revenues with the provinces (though it’s true that government at all levels has problems actually spending its money).
And then there is undeniable fact that some 90,000 men, mainly Sunnis, have joined the Concerned Local Citizens groups to protect their neighborhoods against terrorists. There is no question that tensions linger between these groups and the Shiite-dominated central government. But the situation is still much better than it was a year or two ago when many of the CLC members were actively fighting against the government and its American protectors.
Zakaria is undoubtedly right that even in a best-case scenario, Iraq will require a long-term presence of Americans “in the loop” in order to safeguard the very tenuous progress being made toward a modus vivendi among the competing factions. But that beats the alternative, which is an all-out civil war. The experience of Belgium should make us realize how much patience is required when dealing with deep-rooted tensions and how agonizingly slow political progress can be. That is not, however, an argument for throwing up our hands in despair, as the Democratic presidential candidates seem to be doing.
Yes, I agree. I am very proud of our country. However, I don’t believe there will be an ontological change in reality when Obama becomes President.
That is the main difference. I respect Obama, will support his sensible policy, will oppose the ideas I disagree with, but will keep the tone civil. The past 8 years have seen failures on both the Right and Left. President Bush had many successes and many failures. I think he simply lacked communication.
The Democrats failed to display civil opposition, for all of their talk of many voices, inclusion, and reasoning. Now, I do think it is a little strange to see the new cult of personality in this Inauguration. Why do American flags need Obama’s face on them?
It’s testimony to the power and influence of the U.S. that when there is an issue in which we have only a peripheral interest, foreign governments are quick to organize protest activity. If the Iranians were really as important as they seem to think, they would be setting up meetings and discussions between differing parties. But they, and others, do not. Yet the credibility of the Arab/Muslim world, whose answer to the “Zionist entity” has no diplomatic component, only a genocidal one, is never questioned by the Western utopians. In a culture that supposedly has produced great statesmen, office walls adorned with 8×10 prints of mustachioed tyrants, where is the leader that employs the wisdom of the east to bring a solution to the problem? Is it possible that the Arab/Muslim culture possesses no such wisdom and produces no such leaders?
http://www.riehlworldview.com/carnivorous_conservative/2009/01/bioweapon-gone-wrong-killed-algerian-terrorists.html
http://patterico.com/2009/01/19/al-qaeda-news/
Algerian Al Qaeda playing with chem or bio weapons, I feel so much better now about the future…or not.
We are going to find we are going to miss George W. Bush being around. And Obama is going to find a lot of what he did was the correct thing to do.
The Market has so far this Morning, cast no vote of Confidence.
No – I think the market is fully digesting the real possibility that the UK is bankrupt. I mean really bankrupt. And for reasons that have much to do with what Obama’s domestic agenda could have in store for us. But I don’t think Obama’s inauguration has anything to do with that at this point. The market is pricing in the TARP II garbage, the stimulus package, etc. , and are pretty much beating it to death. And with every poor earnings announcement or bank trouble, it will sink more.
And while all eyes are on Washington, Hamas and Iran waste no time….
“Good luck, Mr. President…”
except with that TARP II thing . . .
and that Stimulus thing . . .
and that national health insurance thing . . .
and that cut n run from Iraq thing . . .
and that re-booting with Islam thing . . .
and that
oh, never mind!
“My President”, “wish him well”, “hope he succeeds”? – Most certainly not.
I’m nauseated by continually hearing so many spineless, supposedly conservative pundits since the election say how much they “wish Obama well,” “hope he succeeds,” etc. No one seems to ask what “doing well” or “succeeding” actually means on Obama’s and his party’s own terms. What does “doing well” or “succeeding” mean to Obama and the Democrat Party? It means getting their left-wing agenda passed, and Exhibit A – the radical pro-abortion moves we can expect in the next few days through Executive Orders – is just a warm-up. Expect further pro-abortion radicalism to be a staple of the Obama administration; a keystone of which will be the litmus tests (not only on abortion, but on a range of legal and constitutional issues) he will impose on federal judicial and Supreme Court nominees, where the after-effects of the Obama administration will likely haunt jurisprudence in this country for decades.
And abortion is just one aspect of a far-reaching leftist agenda that the Obama-Pelosi-Reid Triumvirate wishes to impose on this country.
No, we most certainly should not wish Obama “well” or wish he “succeeds,” for doing well and succeeding on his and his party’s own terms will mean doing ill to the country and making a mess, rather than a success, of things.
Dennis,
I understand your opposition. However, I think many conservatives do not want to take on the liberal partisanship of the past 8 years. We need to promote a civil tone, and oppose ideas, rather than stirring emotions as the liberals have done with Bush.
It is amazing to see all of the venom from Europe towards Bush, and many Americans falling into that trap. How does a continent with a negative birth rate, so arrogantly call Bush the worst President ever? Should we follow their way of life, not create a future generation, and placate radical Islam, too? Is that such a smart, brilliant move?
Western culture appears to be going the way of convenience, handouts, and citizens as the only and last children of the State. So, I do oppose those policies of the Democrats that reflect the socialism of the Europeans. However, i do wish President Obama success to hold the center, and even though I didn’t vote for him, I am proud of Obama, of our country and its institutions.
We should remember that Bush was reviled on the left long before Iraq, before 9/11, even before the Florida election fiasco. Bush was mocked as a stupid monkey, scorned as an uncouth Texan, in the 2000 election season. The hatred of Bush was cultural before it was anything else. Bush was educated in the northeast’s most elite institutions of learning–but he spurned such things for Texas and boots and a touch of a drawl. He did not comport himself in ways that northeasterners associate with intelligence and modernity.
Also, I remember when the rabid left, as Bush was leading us into Iraq against their will, warning ominously that Bush would abolish term limits, perhaps even abolish the voting process altogether, and establish himself as a permanent ruler of the United States. If you don’t believe me, you can look for it yourself. So today they see Bush orchestrating the most respectful transition in modern memory. Of course, by now they’re too deeply ensconced in their Bush hatred to acknowledge that they were wrong about any of their views about him.
Dennis@8
I wish Soon-President-To-Be-Obama success in making our republic more properous and secure. He will unfortunately need to abandon virtually the entirety of the agenda he campaigned on and vigarously oppose his party in Congress to achieve this but let us hope for an epiphany.
Jonas, #9 “We need to promote a civil tone,”
That’s the ticket, we’ll call it the “new tone, and the leftists will be so impressed, they will follow our lead, and ….
Oh never mind, the last guy tried that. When does his trial start again?
Today is historical in that it marks the triumph of the double standard.
It’s always the GOP that goes on about being “civil” and a “new tone, ” which in Washington speak usually means becoming doormats for the left and the Democrat party to walk over. What we need is a vigorous opposition party devoted to clear ideas and principals. For the first two years of the Gingrich controlled Congrees, I had some hopes for the GOP and the direction of the coutnry, but the GOP has been losing its spine since the 1995 government shutdown; and 8 years of Bush’s ideological confusion and general incoherence have finally turned the GOP and much of the right into invertebrate jelly.