The Gertrude Bell Jar

Happy Happy etc. cont.

I thought this was one of the more interesting comments of the day, from the Opinion Editor of the Daily Star in Beirut:

For most Lebanese, the killing of Hariri was very much perceived as an outrage against the normal order of things, because it targeted a rare Arab leader who left behind a constructive legacy and didn't pack a gun. Even recognizing the former prime minister's faults, one often-heard refrain somehow makes perfect sense, particularly against the backdrop of photographs of Hariri's burned body widely disseminated in the local press: "It was unnatural for such a man to die in such a sordid way." This suggested the extent to which the Lebanese today understand (as many should have, but not so long ago didn't) that autocracy is the triumph of the aberrant and the promotion of the inferior.

As the debate continues in the U.S. and elsewhere over Bush's merits and demerits, and over his dissembling, indeed lying, before dispatching forces to Iraq, the Lebanon example shows the advantages of selective interpretation. It matters little where Syria's Lebanese foes stand in disputations over Bush's record, nor did voters in Iraq much care either; both populations took what was relevant to them, accepted Bush's broad sound bites of democratization, and carried the idea on from there according to their parochial interests.

The whole article is worth a read.

The Arab Predicament/Fouad Ajami

The Arab Predicament: Arab Political Thought and Practice Since 1967 by Fouad Ajami.

This book deals with the dilemma posed by the perceived failure of Arab nationalism in the wake of the 1967 defeat of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria by Israel in the Six Day War, and explains how political Islam evolved out of the ashes of the statist nationalist ideologies embraced by Nasserite Egypt and the Baath Party in Syria and Iraq by constructing and objectifying an idealized Islamic past. Includes a detailed analysis of 20th Century Egyptian political history and a survey of the thought of leading intellectuals in the nationalist and Islamist movements, including many figures whose works are still not available in English. A valuable resource, but not friendly to the general reader without a basic grounding in Middle Eastern history.

End Woah

Okay, I've been reduced to looking at National Review for news about Iran, that's what it has come to. There's an explanation for why the CNN story was so different from what was turning up in alternate news sources here. It does sound like whatever it was is over. A posting at the Corner (the NR's blog) says: "An activist type tells me: 'it's never calm over there...there's always SOME town or region that's in upheaval but where yesterday's movement is concerned it has subsided. The next big day where people are going to go out there will be April 2nd which is the 25th anniversary of Khomeini declaring Iran to be an Islamic Republic.'"

Oh, and the Corner also had a link to a story about Syria in the Torygraph.

How can unrest in either of these two countries be so far off the radar? Wasn't everyone all paranoid about U.S. plans to invade either Iran or Syria or a couple of other places at the end of the Iraq War? Not anymore, I guess.

G. said: Oddly for me, I blame the Bush administration, or maybe (not so odd) the State Department. If the folks over there were whispering to the press corps that they are anxiously watching developments, it would prod them into paying more attention.

I suspect that Foggy Bottom is scared to death that there might be change in the works. Maybe the White House is afraid that any cheerleading will give the Baathists and mullahs ammunition to claim it's all a CIA plot (as if the CIA were capable of pulling off a plot). The could be a point.

Still, it raises disturbing parallels to the first Bush administration's attempts to discourage/downplay the Tiananmen Square protests.

I replied: Well it's impossible to know what they're really thinking, isn't it? Whenever I hear anti-war people go off on the fiendish neocon cabal that's taken over Washington, with its dastardly agenda to globalize democracy and human rights, I just wish I could share their total confidence such a Plan is afoot.

G. added: The Chicago Tribune mentions the Iranian celebration today -- in the 12th paragraph deep in the jump on a Metro story about fun-loving suburban Chicago Persians and their quaint ways. Makes it seem like the action in Tehran is little more than another Forest Preserve picnic event. World's greatest newspaper, yep.

It Wouldn't Be Any Fun If They Just Told You The News

Okay, finally a news story with a comment from a State Dept. official, from the New York Sun. And there's another story originating with Iran va Jahan. I ran through the Iranian blogroll at BuzzMachine, but most haven't updated lately, apart from one guy who noted he'd been diverted by Iranian police from a street blocked by anti-government protests on March 16th, but didn't know any more than that. BBC online has a story elliptically about Syria via Syrian expats protesting at Syrian embassies in European cities.

Woah

Hmm, checked to see if CNN was reporting yet that the regime had not stood down as peacefully as all that for Festive Wednesday after all, and found this instead. I'm not making any predictions, but I find it odd that major news outlets don't seem to grok that this could be it. Much more news here (given what CNN was reporting, I figured these must be small isolated incidents or something), also about events in Syria.

Edited to add:
Brain ticking over slowly because I am, indeed, home with a cold today: Why right now? Could it be that between al Qaeda's apparent recent success in influencing Spain to withdraw from Iraq (by a highly reproducible method) and Dubya's sink in the polls vs. a quagmire-talking Democratic nominee, pro-democracy folk in the Middle East are feeling their window of opportunity closing? Moves toward democracy in the region following the conclusion of the Iraq War had been fairly slow and cautious up to now (though faster than I would have expected; I was stunned to read last month that 600,000 Syrians living in Syria had had signed a petition demanding democratic reforms, for example). I was vastly preferring slow and steady to fast and deadly. Events in Syria are getting pretty bloody already.

My friend B. said: I just talked with an Iranian coworker. Her impression was the craziness had more to do with a repressed holiday involving FIRE finally getting official recognition. Also, since it has been banned until now, all of the firecrackers are homemade. Add into that the fact that it appeals mostly to young people, and you can see how things can get out of hand. It doesn't appear that the disorder had much of a political dimension.

I replied: Well, I dunno. Throwing molotov cocktails into the homes of mullahs sounds kind of political to me. And this entire period of political unrest in Iran was ushered in by street celebrations of the victory of the Iranian soccer team over the U.S, which was not exactly inherently political in a regime-changing kind of way.