Honestly, the thing I resent about the comparison is, why can’t the United States be the country that the President of the United States presents as a model for how to preserve a democracy in the face of headline-grabbing terrorist attacks?
That’s what I’ve been wondering. Or should the U.S. also be striving to be like Israel??
I suppose because the US does not in fact exist in the Middle East, and so isn’t as good a comparator as a country that does?
Or it could be the frequency of such attacks - regular, daily terrorist threats being, at least arguably, more of a risk to democracy than a few spectacular attacks.
Both are I think reasonably good reasons to choose Israel rather than the US in this context.
Bush has said a lot of foolish things in the past - I just don’t see this as being one of them.
I’m not sure what the big deal is. Bush frequently speaks up about the advantages of democracies over totalitarian regimes. Nothing new here. He’s saying that Israel is a democracy and that’s a good thing and they are functioning in an imperfect world, even with murderous shitheads constantly trying to screw things up.
Was it bad politically to say this in that it could be taken as an insult? Possibly. But Bush has made it clear he’s more interesting in winnng the war on terrorism than winning this year’s Al Jezeera poll for most beloved western politician.
Getting back to his main point there are big advantages of democracies. I’m constantly frustrated that so-called pacifists rarely are aware of them. For a quick summary of advantages of democracies, especially in the cause of pacifism, check out R.J. Rummel’s website, PowerKills:
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/
Israel didn’t become a democracy while they were occupied, and now they are occupying another country with whom the Iraqi people felt a certain degree of kinship to, even before they were occupied themselves. To me, there is something insulting about that. Also, President Bush continues to pretend that most of the terrorism in Iraq is from an outside source, al-Qaeda, which even I, from my scant reading on the subject, know is not true. It’s a snakes’ nest of religious, tribal, ethnic, nationalist and criminal struggles, all tangled together.
I’d love to hear anyone tell me just what examples Iraq can take from Israel in straightening out the hideous mess their country is in. Shall the Shia, backed by U.S. money and weapons, do the partition thing and then wall off the Sunnis in one or two areas, with military control over all their ports, roads, etc., and then set up a ‘working democracy’ among themselves?
No, they became one while being invaded by most of their neighbors. Whats your point?
Well, they are occupying parts of Jordan, Egypt (though recently they gave part of this up), and Lebanon. The critical question that one should ask is WHY are they occupying parts of those countries…and why haven’t they given that territory back.
Thats nice.
While it may be true that ‘most’ of the terrorists (or insurgents) come from internal sources I’m unsure what this has to do with your OP. Because Bush is out of touch on this subject (or more likely simply wants to emphasize foreign terrorists in Iraq over the local insurgent problem for political reasons) doesn’t mean that he is ALWAYS out of touch. And based on your OP I’d say that his words are being intentionally mis-represented in this case to try and paint a different picture than Bush obviously intended. You say its insulting (to you) that Bush wants the Iraqi’s democracy to be able to continue to function in spite of insurgent/terrorist attacks…in a similar way to how Israel has been able to maintain their democracy in spite of external attacks. Then to illustrate this you blather a bunch of incorrect ‘facts’ about Israel, devoid of context or nuance…as if this proves something.
Take your fingers out of your ears then and stop going ‘nawnawnaw…Israel is evil…nawnawnaw’. Bush ALREADY told you what examples they can take…I’ll repeat. The example of having a working democracy in the face of attacks, both internally and externally. The example of holding on to their democracy despite how easy it would be to simply toss it out the window and bring in Saddam v2.0.
Are you deliberately mis-reading things…or doing it for some other reason? Do you really not understand the history of Israel and its relationship to Palestine? Your attempt at an analogy is ridiculous…as is the thrust of your thread.
Had you said ‘Iraq doesn’t HAVE a working democracy, so how can the Iraqi’s use ANY example in a meaningful way? First they would need to build a stable democracy before they could use any example that has them sticking to democracy in the face of internal and external attacks.’ then you might have had a point…and one I probably would have agreed with, by and large. But instead you started off the thread by lapping up the BBC’s mis-characterization of what Bush was actually saying, and then changed to an anti-Isreal huff…a pretty much fact free and un-nuanced anti-Israel huff.
-XT
Hmmm Bush has now compared the occupation of Iraq to the American Revolution, I mean I guess he is right in a way, he just has which side we’re on mixed up.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/04/AR2007070400624.html