Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said he expected Syrian troops to pull out of Lebanon in a few months, as hundreds of Lebanese protesters returned to central Beirut on Tuesday demanding Syria quit their country.
Syria has 14,000 troops in Lebanon, but its dominant role in the country has come under increasing pressure as a result of mass demonstrations sparked by the assassination last month of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri.
Two weeks of unprecedented protests forced the pro-Syrian cabinet of Prime Minister Omar Karami to step down on Monday, piling pressure on Damascus, and left officials with a complicated search for a new premier.
''It (withdrawal) should be very soon and maybe in the next few months. Not after that,'' Assad told Time magazine in an interview published on its Web site on Tuesday. ''I can't give you a technical answer. The point is the next few months.''
Meanwhile, Mark Steyn weighs in:
Consider just the past couple of days' news: not the ever more desperate depravity of the floundering "insurgency", but the real popular Arab resistance the car-bombers and the head-hackers are flailing against: the Saudi foreign minister, who by remarkable coincidence goes by the name of Prince Saud, told Newsweek that women would be voting in the next Saudi election. "That is going to be good for the election," he said, "because I think women are more sensible voters than men."
Four-time Egyptian election winner - and with 90 per cent of the vote! - President Mubarak announced that next polling day he wouldn't mind an opponent. Ordering his stenographer to change the constitution to permit the first multi-choice presidential elections in Egyptian history, His Excellency said the country would benefit from "more freedom and democracy". The state-run TV network hailed the president's speech as a "historical decision in the nation's 7,000-year-old march toward democracy". After 7,000 years on the march, they're barely out of the parking lot, so Mubarak's move is, as they say, a step in the right direction.
Meanwhile in Damascus, Boy Assad, having badly overplayed his hand in Lebanon and after months of denying that he was harbouring any refugee Saddamites, suddenly discovered that - wouldja believe it? - Saddam's brother and 29 other bigshot Baghdad Baathists were holed up in north-eastern Syria, and promptly handed them over to the Iraqi government.
And, for perhaps the most remarkable development, consider this report from Mohammed Ballas of Associated Press: "Palestinians expressed anger on Saturday at an overnight suicide bombing in Tel Aviv that killed four Israelis and threatened a fragile truce, a departure from former times when they welcomed attacks on their Israeli foes."
No disrespect to Associated Press, but I was disinclined to take their word for it. However, Charles Johnson, whose Little Green Footballs website has done an invaluable job these past three years presenting the ugly truth about Palestinian death-cultism, reported that he went hunting around the internet for the usual photographs of deliriously happy Gazans dancing in the street and handing out sweets to celebrate the latest addition to the pile of Jew corpses - and, to his surprise, couldn't find any.
Why is all this happening? Answer: January 30.
And from Powerline:
We're in a period right now where I can't wait to check the news every day. Events, especially in the Middle East, are moving in what would have been considered an impossibly hopeful direction just a few months ago. The Bush administration believed that if the door to democracy and reform were opened in Iraq, much of the Arab world might follow. This was always a big gamble--one that we supported in part because, as we've often said, no one has proposed a competing plan to deal, long-term, with the problem of Islamic terrorism.
Right now, President Bush's gamble is looking very good indeed. Something like 50 million people have been liberated in Afghanistan and Iraq. Positive developments are occurring before our eyes in Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. It's way too soon to proclaim the administration's strategy a success; indeed, we may not be sure in our lifetimes whether the strategy that underlay the Iraq war was a sound one. But right now, it sure is fun to read the headlines.
Of course, not everyone agrees. MSNBC's Question of the Day is: "Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon, Egypt, Syria: Is the Bush Doctrine working?" Currently, 35% say "yes," while 65% say "no." These folks seem to have a high standard for what constitutes "working," which I suspect tells us more about MSNBC's readership than about the geopolitical merits of the administration's strategy.
The Milwaukee Journal/Sentinel has a great editorial on this topic, marred only by its puzzling reference to Warren Christopher. I guess they couldn't bring themselves to give any credit for the spread of freedom to You-Know-Who....
No comments:
Post a Comment