Israel? Oh, I’m sorry - I didn’t recognize you.
Writing by treason on Wednesday, 29 of November , 2006 at 7:21 am
“Senator Biden, the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, recently suggested a plan for fixing Iraq by breaking it apart. He says he wants to give the various ethnic and religious components of Iraq ’some breathing space.’ But what about everyone else in the Middle East who is gasping for air? Fragmenting a country as focal as Iraq sets an intriguing precedent for the entire region: it is an admission that the post-World War I security arrangement arrived at by former colonial bureaucrats while dismembering the Ottoman Empire has failed, and that a radical reappraisal in the direction of matching borders to strongly held identities should be made.
Mr. Biden is running for president, and there’s an element of political showmanship in his plan. However, it is a fresh look at a seemingly intractable problem. I like this approach, and have been considering it myself for a while, but what applies to Iraq has to apply to the Middle East, for Iraq today is the incubator of general fixes for the wider region. Superficially, the plan works great, but only to a certain point - for I am always stumped by the question, ‘What about the Druze?’”
– Nibras Kazimi, “What About the Druze?”
Precisely! Nobody ever seems to mention them. It’s sort of like the discussions during the last election cycle that omitted Israel. I was listening, but didn’t hear an answer regarding the Democrat plan on our friends. We know there are entities in the Middle East who refuse to recognize Israel, but have Democrats joined their club?
I’m reminded of the little old lady in Louisiana who called C-SPAN to invite the Israelis to relocate to Nawlins. I wrote about her yesterday and suggested there might be problems associated with her solution. To invite Israel to pick up and move to the Gulf is making the assumption that all Israelis are Jews. Three quarters of the population is Jewish, but twenty percent is Arab, mostly Muslim. There are also Christians in Israel. And then - and this is what got me on the subject - there are the Druze.
If Iran refuses to recognize Israel, aren’t they also refusing to recognize Arabs, Muslims, Christians, and the Druze?
“The survival of the Druze, and their political importance, are just one of a multitude of things about the Middle East that don’t fit into a rational framework. Politicians such as Mr. Biden can leisurely contemplate drawing neat lines on the map, just like the colonial bureaucrats did, but will it translate into security?”
I said yesterday that drawing new borders and moving people around like chess pieces was out of the question. Can you imagine the crazy quilt we’d end up with?
“Mr. Biden’s proposal in Iraq was probably not thought out in terms of how it could fix the larger Middle East, but Iraq is the model for all the others. What fails - or works - will be the rest of the region’s future. Any grand restructuring has to be careful that the finished project does not end up like a do-it-yourself project with extra nails, screws, and parts that were part of the original design but were somehow left over after completion. The Druze, as well as other historic, cultural and political anomalies, are too relevant to be dismissed.”
I was up early yesterday morning and watched President Vike-Freiberga of Latvia as she introduced President Bush before his speech. She said something that will stay with me forever. She spoke of Latvia’s struggle for freedom and once it had been secured, the people were carefully “blowing on the flame of liberty” - and what a perfect analogy. Being so careful not to extinguish the flame, but instead to encourage it so it would intensify and grow stronger with measured breath and hope.
And then Bush:
“…We refuse to give in to a pessimism that consigns millions across the Middle East to endless oppression. We understand that, ultimately, the only path to lasting peace is through the rise of lasting free societies.
Here in the Baltic region, many understand that freedom is universal and worth the struggle. During the Second World War, a young girl here in Riga escaped with her family from the advancing Red Army. She fled westward, moving first to a refugee camp in Germany, and then later to Morocco, where she and her family settled for five and a half years. Spending her teenage years in a Muslim nation, this Latvian girl came to understand a fundamental truth about humanity: Moms and dads in the Muslim world want the same things for their children as moms and dads here in Riga — a future of peace, a chance to live in freedom, and the opportunity to build a better life.
Today, that Latvian girl is the leader of a free country — the Iron Lady of the Baltics, the President of Latvia. And the lessons she learned growing up in Casablanca guide her as she leads her nation in this world. Here is how she put it earlier this year, in an address to a joint meeting of the United States Congress: ‘We know the value of freedom and feel compassion for those who are still deprived of it. Every nation on Earth is entitled to freedom,’ your President said. She said, ‘We must share the dream that some day there won’t be a tyranny left anywhere in the world. We must work for this future, all of us, large and small, together.’
Like your President, I believe this dream is within reach, and through the NATO Alliance, nations large and small are working together to achieve it.”
We’re so afraid those evil neocons are stealing our freedoms, yet we don’t seem to care that our friends in Israel are living with the constant threat from nations who refuse to “recognize” them and want them to disappear; that the Druze, spread over four countries, are never part of the debate; and the Iraqis, for some reason, don’t seem to merit the type of freedom they’re entitled to. If we don’t help Iraq and make it possible for them to blow on that flame of liberty, who will?
My hope is that, like the people of Latvia, Iraqis will embrace the concept of freedom and help us help them. The flame of liberty - yes! Setting fire to your countrymen - no! This will take time, but it’s better to invest it now than later.
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