http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7103517/site/newsweek/?GT1=6305March 14 issue - Events in the Middle East over the past few weeks have confirmed the theories of that great scholar of the region, Thomas (Tip) O'Neill. The late speaker of the House's most memorable aphorism was "All politics is local." It's true even of the politics of rage. As long-repressed societies in the Middle East open up, we are discovering that their core concerns are not global but local. Most ordinary Arabs, it turns out, are not consumed by grand theories about the clash between Islam and the West, or the imperialism of American culture, or even the Palestinian cause. When you let the Lebanese speak, they want to talk about Syria's occupation of their country. When Iraqis got a chance to congregate, they voted for a government, not an insurgency. When a majority of Palestinians were heard from, they endorsed not holy terror to throw Israel into the sea, but practical diplomacy to get a state.
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The other noted political scientist who has been vindicated in recent weeks is George W. Bush. Across New York, Los Angeles and Chicago—and probably Europe and Asia as well—people are nervously asking themselves a question: "Could he possibly have been right?" The short answer is yes. Whether or not Bush deserves credit for everything that is happening in the Middle East, he has been fundamentally right about some big things.
Bush never accepted the view that Islamic terrorism had its roots in religion or culture or the Arab-Israeli conflict. Instead he veered toward the analysis that the region was breeding terror because it had developed deep dysfunctions caused by decades of repression and an almost total lack of political, economic and social modernization. The Arab world, in this analysis, was almost unique in that over the past three decades it had become increasingly unfree, even as the rest of the world was opening up. His solution, therefore, was to push for reform in these lands.
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Talk about revisionist history! Like we're supposed to believe that Bush had this grand design all along to remake the Middle East into a bastion of freedom and democracy, and his invasion if Iraq (which Zakaria conspicuously does not mention specifically in the article) was part of this plan? The neocon administration never even thought of this idea until this year's SOTU, and this was only because all the previous revisionist excuses for the Iraq war - WMD's, war on terra, removing Saddam, etc. failed to stay spinning in their favor. Zakaria also doesn't mention at all how Bush is more than happy to fully support oppressive Islamic regimes in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Central Asia, as long as they further his true PNAC agenda of increasing corporatist power. Democracy is only a window-dressing for them; it's a term that is being rendered meaningless because of the Orwellian way the neocons have twisted it with overuse, like "freedom", "liberation", "anti-American", and "support our troops".
I suspect this article is actually Zakaria's latest attempt at justifying his unquestioning support for Bush's War on Iraq a long time ago. I recall a couple of articles he wrote after it became apparent that the WMD's were not ever going to be found where he started to show signs of doubt, but now he apparently has remembered to more closely follow the administration talking points and spin like he did before, which absolves him of his guilt.
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