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Obama was Not Responsible for the Election Results in Lebanon
ObamaNerd, PubliCola's corrOspondent, is too busy with other stuff this week to file his "OMG!Obama" column, so I'm gonna use his absence as an excuse to step outside of my regular purview and post about something I'm obsessed with, Middle East politics.
The Obama-fawning NYT used this week's election in Lebanon —where to many pundits' surprise, Hezbollah did not come out on top—to cite Obama as the reason behind the March 14th Movement's victory. (The March 14 Movement is the moderate coalition that has been holding onto power since its pro-Democracy Cedar revolution in 2005.)
It is ridiculous U.S. myopia to credit Obama with this week's election results in Lebanon.
Let's rewind with a little context: Contrary to all conventional wisdom (even conventional wisdom in Israel), Israel's war on Hezbollah in 2006 was actually successful. It was not, as everyone reported, a sort of mini-Vietnam for the Israeli army. I've been arguing this for a while. And anticipating Hezbollah's troubles.
Check it out: Israel routed Hezbollah out of Southern Lebanon.
True, Hezbollah wasn't forced to disarm (as the U.N. mandated in the cease fire), but honestly, has Hezbollah hit Israel at all since? No. What they have done is issue a statement —contrary to anything they'd ever said before—saying they were willing to find a diplomatic solution to their dispute with Israel.
Hezbollah has also been forced into the political realm and put to the test as a political movement, which, frustrated, led them to shoot it up with the Lebanese army and rival political factions (like the March 14th Movement) in May 2008 . (Hezbollah's military win against Lebanese military forces at the time allowed them to bully their way into a power sharing agreement.)
And that leads us to this year's election: Obama? Did the NYT ever stop to think that Hezbollah's strategy of bullying and machine gunning isn't popular with the Lebanese voters, and this week's vote was a straight up rejection of Hezbollah's militarism.
The reason I voted for Obama is because I believed his peace-making style would work miracles in the Middle East, and his awesome speech last week convinced me it's true, but to give him credit for the moderates' victory in Lebanon this week—when they were predicting a Hezbollah victory only moments earlier—underscores what the mainstream press has missed all along: Hezbollah was diminished in its war with Israel and forced to operate in the political arena where their militarism has proven to be a turn off for the Lebanese people.
The Obama-fawning NYT used this week's election in Lebanon —where to many pundits' surprise, Hezbollah did not come out on top—to cite Obama as the reason behind the March 14th Movement's victory. (The March 14 Movement is the moderate coalition that has been holding onto power since its pro-Democracy Cedar revolution in 2005.)
It is ridiculous U.S. myopia to credit Obama with this week's election results in Lebanon.
Let's rewind with a little context: Contrary to all conventional wisdom (even conventional wisdom in Israel), Israel's war on Hezbollah in 2006 was actually successful. It was not, as everyone reported, a sort of mini-Vietnam for the Israeli army. I've been arguing this for a while. And anticipating Hezbollah's troubles.
Check it out: Israel routed Hezbollah out of Southern Lebanon.
True, Hezbollah wasn't forced to disarm (as the U.N. mandated in the cease fire), but honestly, has Hezbollah hit Israel at all since? No. What they have done is issue a statement —contrary to anything they'd ever said before—saying they were willing to find a diplomatic solution to their dispute with Israel.
Hezbollah has also been forced into the political realm and put to the test as a political movement, which, frustrated, led them to shoot it up with the Lebanese army and rival political factions (like the March 14th Movement) in May 2008 . (Hezbollah's military win against Lebanese military forces at the time allowed them to bully their way into a power sharing agreement.)
And that leads us to this year's election: Obama? Did the NYT ever stop to think that Hezbollah's strategy of bullying and machine gunning isn't popular with the Lebanese voters, and this week's vote was a straight up rejection of Hezbollah's militarism.
The reason I voted for Obama is because I believed his peace-making style would work miracles in the Middle East, and his awesome speech last week convinced me it's true, but to give him credit for the moderates' victory in Lebanon this week—when they were predicting a Hezbollah victory only moments earlier—underscores what the mainstream press has missed all along: Hezbollah was diminished in its war with Israel and forced to operate in the political arena where their militarism has proven to be a turn off for the Lebanese people.
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