Peace in the Middle East

-Successful elections in Palestine.
-An obvious loss of support amongst regular-joe Palestinians for suicide bombing.
-Syria handing over Baathists.
-Lebanon kicking out its pro-Syrian government.
-Hosni Mubarak deciding to let more than one person run in Egypt's next election.
-Saudi Arabia announcing that democratic local elections will be held.

and

-Successful elections in Iraq.

Anyone see a connection?

There is still terrible violence in the Middle East, terrible violence in Iraq, but you'd be a fool to deny that there is a massive shift towards Democracy going on in the Middle East, and it's near-impossible to deny that this shift is occurring in no small part because of Iraq's successful elections. Hell, the NY Times wrote an editorial talking about this stuff yesterday.

I predict a begrudging Nobel Peace Prize for Bush in 2008, no joke.

I'm not gloating about any of this stuff, by the way - I'm just hopeful. I'm still not happy about how the post-invasion turned out in Iraq - things have been so bad that I didn't expect this to actually happen. It was what I was looking for a couple of years ago before the invasion began, but 1000+ soldier deaths and uncountable Iraqi deaths dashed most of those hopes - I began to think the region was hopeless, that perhaps these people weren't fit for democracy and that the hard-left/hard-right actually knew what it was talking about.

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Originally Posted by Stone

I predict a begrudging Nobel Peace Prize for Bush in 2008, no joke.

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Well then I predict the Nobel Prize to become the Golden Globe of world political achievement.

See, I knew this was eventually going to come up. So, I did the research.

- Palestine has had elections before, it's never about the elections there it's always about stopping terrorism and / or the occupation. Until either of those happen, I'm sorry but I'm just not going to dance in the streets.

- This has actually been case for a while now. People are fatigued on both sides, and so are starting to ignore the radicals on both sides (settlers / jihadists).

- Syrian Kurds handed them over to Iraqi Kurds. Kurds = Pro US.

- The Lebanese actually mostly attribute this to what they saw happen in the Ukraine. This makes a lot of sense because their situations are fairly similiar.

- It sounds nice, but they might want to let the opposition leader out of prison first before saying he has the right to run for office.

- Do these elections in Saudi Arabia mean the royal family will relinquish any power? Not that I can see. Nor does it address the human rights calamities going on there.

So, while one can certainly see a correlation I wouldn't go so far as to say the sole reason any of this is happening is because of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. It's really more of a right place at the right time, sort of thing.

Also, G.W. for the Nobel? Doubtful. Very doubtful.

Palestine had elections with two real candidates, Abbas and Barghouti - the people there had real choice, and they chose Abbas, someone they knew was willing to compromise and make peace. There is still violence in Israel, but the tone is changing - look at the Palestinians response to last week's Tel Aviv bombing. No celebration - the people seem to be genuinely frustrated with the terrorists.

What's going on in Lebanon has something to do with Ukraine, yes, but I've heard/read interviews with a couple of Lebanese leaders who have directly referenced Iraq as an inspiration for all this.

The elections in Egypt and Saudi Arabia are small steps forward - the old problems are all still there - but there's motivation towards something else that has not been there before.

I don't think that the US invasion is the sole reason, but I think it's the main reason. And, if in 2008, we have a relatively stable Iraq, an independent, functioning Palestine, a liberated Lebanon, a nuclear-weaponless Iran, and have seen elections in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, I expect people across the world to be willing to make the connection between these advancements and Bush's choices in the middle east since 2001, and I think a peace prize would result.

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Originally Posted by Stone

I don't think that the US invasion is the sole reason, but I think it's the main reason. And, if in 2008, we have a relatively stable Iraq, an independent, functioning Palestine, a liberated Lebanon, a nuclear-weaponless Iran, and have seen elections in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, I expect people across the world to be willing to make the connection between these advancements and Bush's choices in the middle east since 2001, and I think a peace prize would result.

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I'll admit that all of the above are positive steps forward (including the Iraqi elections), but to say that all of them will develop as perfectly as you describe seems to me a bit on the optimistic side. Also, it's more than just the end result the matters. We shouldn't let ourselves get suckered into an 'ends justifies the means' scenario here.

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Originally Posted by g0zen

I'll admit that all of the above are positive steps forward (including the Iraqi elections), but to say that all of them will develop as perfectly as you describe seems to me a bit on the optimistic side. Also, it's more than just the end result the matters. We shouldn't let ourselves get suckered into an 'ends justifies the means' scenario here.

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Yeah, it's optimistic - any number of things could happen that would destabilize the region - but I also don't see it as pie-in-the-sky stuff. We're on the road to all of those situations being in effect in 2008.

If the Middle East looks how I described it in 2008, then I believe the end will have justified the means - those thousands of deaths are a terrible cost, but innumerable lives will have been saved by our actions.

g0zen rocks. He does his homework to shit all over true progress before the claim of said progress is even made. What a patriot.

Of course, my plan for peace in the Middle East would have saved thousands of American lives and billions of dollars. It's called move the Israelis to Canada and turn the rest into a sheet of glass.

Ahh, shut up, he's demonstrated far more knowledge about what's happening in the area than you have - he's got a different take on it. I disagree, but he's more of a patriot than the worthless Republicans who have no idea why they're supporting the war beyond the fact that it's a Republican who is waging it.

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Originally Posted by Yoshi

g0zen rocks. He does his homework to shit all over true progress before the claim of said progress is even made. What a patriot.

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I'm sorry if injecting some realism into the cries that peace has just suddenly arrived in the Middle East hurts your feelings so much.

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Originally Posted by Stone

Ahh, shut up, he's demonstrated far more knowledge about what's happening in the area than you have - he's got a different take on it. I disagree, but he's more of a patriot than the worthless Republicans who have no idea why they're supporting the war beyond the fact that it's a Republican who is waging it.

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I support it because it makes America safer, and any reason beyond that pales in importance.