Abu Hatem أبو حاتم

The Doha Accords: The Best Melancholly Solution

Writing by abuhatem on Monday, 26 of May , 2008 at 6:05 pm

Since Michel Aoun’s Free Patriotic Movement defeated Phalangist Amin Gemayl for his murdered son’s parliament seat last summer the Lebanese crisis has percipitated. The day after the fact, disputes arised with Gemayl accusing Aoun of electoral fraud and profiting from Armenian and Shiite votes. The March 14th government majority suffered its first blow.

A few months later, the road to the Presidential elections made clear that there would be no elections. A few March 14th MPs assasinated later, and March 8th’s withdrawal from the government, caused a true political crisis in Lebanon in November. Aoun was determined to be president, no matter what the cost. The realpolitik nature of the March 8th’s alliance - Hezbollah, Amal, and the Free Patriotic Movement - was apparent. Many failed attempts at acheiving an agreement and electing a president, with intervention from Maronite Cardinal Nasrallah Boutrous Sfeir, came of no avail.

For all of us that remember what happened next it was a classic game of who blinks first. Aoun pressured the government to accept an agreement in which he was president and Hariri prime minister, and Hariri refused. Many meetings between the opposition and the government ensued with no success. The U.S. and France attempted to place pressure on the opposition in numerous visits to the region, but the opposition would not blink. After Lebanon’s former pro-opposition president Emile Lahoud’s term was up on November 24th 2007, it became a country without a president.

Lahoud attempted to instate a state of emergency in his last hours of office which was immediately revoked by the interim March 14th government. Hezbollah called the interim government’s calls to elect its own president “a coup.” President Bush had encouraged his allies in March 14th to elect a president switfly without Hezbollah. Hezbollah drew their line firmly in the ground and with a millieu of threats stalemate ensued. The brinkmanship of an international struggle lied squarely in Beirut.

The government’s actions in shutting down Hezbollah’s telecommunications network was the final straw for March 8th. Hezbollah showed its power, and in a four day occupation of Beirut and Tyre, proved that it held the balance of power. Seven months after Lahoud’s term completed, the government finally decided that anarchy, civil war, and instability were too much of a price to pay, and gave Hezbollah veto power in the Doha Agreement two days ago.

Homo economicus, self-interested and rational man, does not enter into agreements or accords unless he sees benefit. The Doha Agreement is a positive-sum game. The opposition achieves veto power and keeps their weapons, while March 14th retains stability and a Sanoira led cabinet. The opposition has proved that it knows how to play its cards right in achieving its objectives . Lebanese politics are clearly not serving the Lebanese - they serve as a battlefield for the world powers.

Hezbollah’s alliance with Christian leader Michele Aoun has served its purpose for both parties. And the broad coalition of former adversaries in the March 14th bloc will probably begin to break up. As history shows, politics, especially Lebanese politics, makes strange bedfellows. While the stability brought about by the Doha agreement is perferable to anarchy for both parties, a new era of internal strife appears inevitable after the next parliamentary elections set for 2009. Lebanon is between a rock and a hardplace.

International relations theorist Kenneth Waltz notes that bipolar international systems are more stable than unipolar ones. The Middle East is currently a bipolar balance-of-power system. Although the Doha agreement gives Hezbollah the advantage, the threat of war has been put off for now. While most see it as a victory for Hezbollah, French President Nicholas Sarkozy called the agreement a “great success.” Even the United States government congratulated Lebanon on the agreement. Lofty rhetoric about democracy is being rejected for more sober talk of stability. As Robin Wright, chief Middle East correspondent for the Washington Post said recently despite American rhetoric about Arab democratization, it is clear that its final realization was the need for stability.

Lebanon is not the first country to be an international battlefield and it certaintly will not be the last. In Taiwan, Burma, North Korea, and the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War, the west and its allies found that stability was a higher goal than democracy. When democratization and standing for freedom has burdensome consequences, great powers act in their self-interest and cost-benefit analysis. In the height of the second World War, the Allies united with Stalin’s Russia.

Lebanon cannot solve its problems through the political sphere or with war on the streets. Until the Syria-Iran-Hezbollah-Hamas alliance is broken up, there will be a vital interest in Lebanon for Iranian foreign policy. It is the same with the U.S. and France. These countries care for Lebanon as a means to an end. The recently reported Turkish mediated Israeli-Syrian talks are a good start. If Syria meets its security and political objectives, it will find no need in Hezbollah or Iranian protection. Allies and enemies come and go in the self-help world of international politics. Yet as long as the greater diseases of the problems are not cured, the Doha agreement’s attempts at peace, may be unfortunately the temporary and melancholly solution to Lebanon’s problems.

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Category: Lebanese Politics

The New Arab Cold War

Writing by abuhatem on Tuesday, 13 of May , 2008 at 9:38 am

A piece I wrote for YaLibnan.com:

yalibnan.com/site/archives/2008/05/the_new_arab_co.php

The outbreak of violence in the streets of Beirut in Lebanon are just another chapter in the modern history of the most backwards civilization in the contemporary world.

arab cold war.jpgThe Arab world, which falls severely below Africa on all benchmarks, is ailing. Yet probably the most significant development of this “new Middle East” is a new Arab Cold War.

Henry Kissinger in his ‘Does America Need a Foreign Policy?’ book published shortly before the terrorist attacks of September 11th, described the Middle East as an international system that was based in feudalism and ethnic and religious conflict which sharply contrasted with the notion of the modern sovereign state consequent to the 1648 European peace of Westphalia.

This may have been the case back then, but undoubtedly the invasion of Iraq has created in the Middle East a new balance-of-power politics based in political realism. The current Middle East is a manifestation of the realpolitik of Machiavelli and Metternich.

Following the war in Iraq, the regional balance of power radically changed. Without Iraq to check it, Iran increased its influence in the country’s vacuum, backing pro-Iranian Shiite factions such as the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), and radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army.

Iran’s alliance with Syria, and its strong influence in Iraq, Lebanon, and Gaza, have created what many term a “Shiite crescent” in the Middle East. Persian Gulf states such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait are growing increasingly insecure.

The Iranian influence in the Arab world was perhaps felt most strongly during the 2006 summer war between Hezbollah and Israel. Hezbollah’s newfound popularity and declarations of victory reverberated through the Arab street, to the chagrin of Sunni Arab states such as Saudi Arabia who’s Mufti Hamid Ali al-Jabreen released a fatwa or Muslim edict claiming it was Islamically forbidden to pray for the victory of the Shiite Hezbollah. Since the 2006 conflict, a security crisis has escalated in Arab nations fearing Iranian influence - just this fall Saudi Arabia had signed a monumental arms deal with the United States.

Hezbollah’s disobedience to Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Sanoira’s alleged calls to withdraw from its seizure of Western Beirut for exchange of nullifying the government decision to destroy the Shiite militia’s illegal telecommunications network are simply another example of Iranian victory. The Washington Times proclaimed it “Hezbollah’s ‘redrawing’ of the Middle East map.” As with al-Sadr’s threats for war and uprising in Iraq’s Basra, the threat of violence has caused the government to cave in without any true battles. Sun Tzu, the great Chinese strategist once wrote that the best victory was defeating one’s opponent without battle. The U.S. backed Lebanese government was forced to claim yesterday that “Lebanon’s true enemy Israel,” while the U.S. backed Iraqi government has been discussing “close ties” to American adversary - Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmedinijad. The struggle for influence in the Arab world is self evident.

With help from Chinese investment, Russian arms deals, Venezuelan solidarity, and its traditional ally Syria, Iran has attempted to protect and expand its sphere of influence in the Middle East. The U.S. and France have supported Arab states such as Saudi Arabia, and Egypt which have largely allied themselves to the pro-American Lebanese government faction called the March 14th coalition.

Alliances are formed to expand spheres of interest and attempt at securing vital national interests. The new blocs of Middle Eastern powers illustrate the expansiveness of the current problem. Instead of looking at symptoms, such as Hezbollah’s take over as West Beirut, one must look at the full disease. The root of this new instability and power politics has been the brash and preemptive foreign policies of the Bush administration. Whether in invading Iraq, supporting the far right policies of former Israeli premier Ariel Sharon, giving the green light to current Israeli premier Ehud Olmert’s 2006 bombardment of Lebanon, or go-it-alone unilateralism, it is clear that American policies in the Middle East have provoked the fear and insecurity which have led to the current atmosphere of Arab power politics. Destabilizing the region have led it to be mired by civil strife.

One can only hope that the foreign policies of the next American administration take a more cooperative turn. A destabilized Middle East is a destabilized world. The consequences of the continuation of realpolitik are a Saudi-Iranian arms race, the inducements of nuclear weapons by insecure Arab states, civil strife in the Palestinian territories, Lebanon, and Iraq, and a long period of stasis in resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict.

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Category: Lebanese Politics

“A Declaration of War” - Reflections on the Lebanon Crisis

Writing by abuhatem on Thursday, 8 of May , 2008 at 2:11 pm

We have been waiting for this day for a long, long time. Ever since January and the absence of a President in Lebanon, we have been waiting for the civil war to break out.

Today with the Sanoira government’s seizure of the telecommunications system, Hezbollah’s Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah called the acts “a declaration of war.” There has been gunfire and RPG fire in the streets.

For the first time in a long time, CNN and MSNBC are covering something other than the Presidential campaign.

What is next for Lebanon?

Well, this is the failure of democracy in the Middle East. Democracy just does not work, especially the factionalism and confessionalism of the Lebanese system, in the Arab world. It is not that democracy is outdated or a bad form of government, it is just that the Arabs are not advanced enough for democracy at the current moment. What is the use of democracy without the rule of law, democratic institutions, and civil society?

Instead, we find that democracy in the Middle East actually precipitates problems. Contrary to the neoconservatives’ arguments, democracy simply increases competition amongst the various factions in Iraq, or Lebanon, and simply turns each group against each other, increasing tensions. As they say, “all politics is tribal,” if in the U.S. Obama is getting over 90% of the black vote - and Hillary is getting a clear supermajority of the white women vote - then why do we blame anyone for voting their tribe?

Lebanon, to any hardheaded realist view of the situation, is not going to be solved by lofty ideals like democracy. Lebanon is a pressure cooker of Sunni, Shiite, Maronite, Druze, secular, socialist, and capitalist. Everyone is in their little camps which eventually break down to a March 8th alliance supported by Iran and Syria, and a March 14th alliance supported by the U.S. and France. Everyone is playing their cards. It is international politics, each side seeking to alter the Lebanese bloc of the wide balance of power.

“Democracy,” just means a way of choosing leaders. Unlike common belief, it is not the “only” or “best” form of government. Throughout the centuries philosophers have defined governments not by the way of choosing their leaders - but whether they rule for their own sake or for the sake of their peoples (like Aristotle). Moreover, the American founding fathers themselves feared and hated direct democracy for the “tyranny of the majority,” and ignorance of the people in directly choosing their leaders. In the words of American political philosopher Willmore Kendall, the founders made it such that majorities would have to be so enduring that they lasted several years - in electing a President and a Congress - and to survive many challenges of minority rights, until they would be passed.

Friedrich Bastiat, an eighteenth century French economist, writes in his The Law, that one unfortunate byproduct of democracy is that because one group will use government to achieve unfair advantages - for instance big business - then the people will use government to also achieve unfair advantages - for instance creating more and more regulations and programs against business and pro-labor. In the end, Bastiat claimed, you had a hodgepodge of laws created for the sake of injustice on other groups - and since two wrongs don’t make a right, you had a web of injustice.

This has been the theme of many modern political scientists. James Buchanan, the founder of economic public choice theory, notes that one of the major flaws of democracy is that different interest groups can often change the rules of the game in their favor. Since human beings are rational actors, he argued, they will rationally want to benefit their groups through government law. Instead of a market economy and fair playing field and instead of the preservation of human dignity and natural rights, we have such absurdities as the government (specifically the Federal Reserve) bailing out the investment bank Bear Stearns, and then the Congress attempting to bail out owners of failed mortgages. This is a classic textbook example of Bastiat and Buchanan’s sentiments.

Many places in the world are simply not developed enough for democracy. It is not the tell all be all. Nor is it the raison de’Etere of American foreign policy. Every state looks out for its own national interest first and foremost. In Lebanon, democracy has brought about two civil wars since its inception following World War II, and now most probably a third. People vote for their tribes. It is true, all politics is tribal.

There is no doubt that tyranny and totalitarianism are oppressive regimes. Yet, how many states in the world enjoyed peace and prosperity under limited benevolent monarchy? Although speaking of monarchy is today taboo, many monarchies - classical and modern - have been limited governments which did not dare to transgress against human rights. In fact, the first “limited” government in the world, and indeed one of the forefathers of a society based upon liberty and human rights, was the British monarchy following the Glorious Revolution of the sixteenth century. The monarchy of the Muslim world, even under the Abbasids, still recognized certain inalienable human rights. In fact, some modern political scientists noted that monarchies taxed their citizens far less than democracies.

Does this mean democracy is bad? Of course not. But like every government system conceived by man, it is flawed. And one of its chief flaws is that it simply cannot maintain the limited government it strives for. As Winston Churchill said “democracy is one of the worst systems of government, but the best conceived by man.” Its power grows throughout the ages, like it has in every country it has been tried in. Although it may start out divided and limited it slowly becomes more absolutist and in favor of certain special interests and factions. This is what Israeli historian J.L. Tallmon called totalitarian democracy, or absolutism by the people. Tallmon noted that some of the worst regimes in history have been absolutist by the people.

Although America’s divided branches of government have saved it from much of these squabbles - one must still note that executive power has grown severely, especially in the past eight years, while at the same time Congress encroaches slowly upon our civil liberties (the Patriot Act), our property (zoning laws and eminent domain) and everything else in our lives. When Hillary Clinton decided that she wants a “windfall profits tax” i.e. - the government thinks, in its subjective preference, that the oil companies have made too much money with their record profits (with I may add, go along with record expenses - the oil companies’ profit margins are about 7%, very “reasonable”) and thus choses how much is “too much” and then steals its view of the “excess” with a 90% tax for whichever “reasonable” time period the government wants.

We may vote these people in, it may be democratic, but it is injustice nonetheless to transgress against the natural human right to one’s property and to limit one’s economic liberty. It may be the will of the majority, but justice, in the monotheistic religions as well as the natural law tradition, is - to quote Aristotle “giving everyone his due.” It is yet another example of Bastiat and Buchanan’s sentiments.

Furthermore, value economically is subjective. There is no such thing as an “excess profit” except to one’s subjective mind. Profits are subjective. Goods are sought because of their marginal utility. One of the greatest economic blunders of the Middle Ages was the notion of “just price,” or the conception of some sort of objective price value of economic goods. The neo-socialist Muslim world does not understand this, but their ancestors would. As the Cambridge History of Economics notes, Muslims affirmed the price mechanism even back to the Prophet Muhammad (saw) himself who banned price controls. It was Ibn Khaldun himself whose works influenced the Salamanca school of the Thomist monks who refuted Aquinas’ view of the just price.

Democracy has in it that unfortunate tendency, as all government, for a growing encroachment of government power and the curbing of liberty. “Power corrupts,” Lord Acton says, “and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” The more absolutist our democracies become, the more dangerous they become domestically and abroad. This is especially manifest in the streets of Lebanon at the moment and the war between Hezbollah and the government. What we are witnessing now is simply a power struggle - a power struggle by person, by sect, by faction, and a proxy-war by different great powers. Whether they are fighting for an Iranian proxy to fight Israel or threaten Arab hegemony in the region; or for the United States or France’s attempts at establishing a proxy to maintain a regional balance-of-power: make no mistake, this has nothing to do with democracy. This is simply realpolitik.

I am not a hard headed realist, but sometimes thats the only thing that a situation portends…

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Category: Lebanese Politics, Political philosophy

Francois al-Hajj a martyr, as Arabs continue to blow each other up

Writing by abuhatem on Thursday, 13 of December , 2007 at 11:54 pm

headline734073.jpg

Arabs love to kill each other. The rest of the world has nothing on us! Or at least we can say Arabs love to bomb each other, when it comes to bombings Arabs excel par excellence. It is very ironic that the top three stories in world news yesterday were -suicide bombings in Algeria, suicide bombings in ‘Ammara in Iraq, and the suicide car bombing of Francois al-Hajj. All Arabs killing Arabs. Yet, at the same time we complain that the media is holding us to a double standard. Perhaps if we weren’t so marred by the mentality of “agree with me or I will bomb you,” the world would actually consider the Arab viewpoint.

I haven’t written anything about the assassination of General Francois al-Hajj of Lebanon because there hasn’t been enough time for analysis yet. However, the best article concerning the situation comes from Robert Fisk in yesterday’s Independent:

When I had dinner with Mr Jumblatt, I made the point that what was terrible about the assassinations was we are beginning to expect them, they are part of our daily life. Every day we are expected to endure an assassination or an attempted assassination, and what is it meant to mean?

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Category: Lebanese Politics

The Media on Lebanon: Europe cares, the U.S. doesn’t.

Writing by abuhatem on Saturday, 24 of November , 2007 at 3:11 am

Robert Fisk, Middle East expert and columnist for the British daily, The Independent, is reporting from Beirut today. The story is extremely insightful and a very educated piece. I mean a country in the Middle East without a President is a pretty big deal, right?

France News 24, the French English-language international broadcasting network, has Lebanon as its top story. The BBC is covering Lebanon’s crisis, as well as the British daily’s The Guardian and The Times of London - who both carry the story as their top headline.

However, moving back to our shores, the story is much different. CNN has barely covered the story, although it does have a piece on its website. The New York Times has the most pathetic half-page article describing the situation, which cannot even be found on the front page of its website.

The only good article about the situation in Lebanon today, on U.S. soil, comes from The Washington Post which has a very well written, detailed, and lengthy article by their Middle East reporter Anthony Shadid, who also wrote the best American piece on the situation yesterday.

Why all the silence in the American media on the matter? Well, the corporate media wants to cover that which makes money, and in a free-market, the consumers in the United States want to hear more about Brittney Spear’s kids than the Lebanese elections. Understandable, but also sad…

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Category: Lebanese Politics, The media

The Schitzophrenic Lebanese

Writing by abuhatem on Sunday, 18 of November , 2007 at 4:35 am

Depending on which angle you view from Lebanon can be a hallmark of success, or of the greatest failures in the Middle East. It is thus that I call it the most schizophrenic country in the world.

No other country in the entire region at least has achieved so much. Free markets, free elections, and a truly Democratic system compared to all others in the region. In Lebanon there actually exists rule of law, and the religious beliefs of all seem to be respected throughout the system. Lebanon is neither extremist secular nor a fundamentalist state. Courts for each faith settle religious law matters, and all are free to worship and believe as they wish.

It is only in Lebanon that you find such a population of minorities in the Middle East. While Syria, Jordan, and Palestine have many Christians - Lebanon is obviously the bastion of Christendom in the Middle East. At the same time, Lebanon can be said to be the bastion of the Arab Shi’a.

Yet at the same time, this nation has been torn apart by more civil wars than you can count. Everyday it seems as if one sect does not agree with another. An exemplar of the backwords sectarianism characteristic of the “failed civilization,” of modern Arabism, in Lebanon you will find Christians hating Muslims, Muslims hating Druze, and Shi’a hating Sunni.

If you compare Lebanon’s civil war with the modern civil war in Iraq, time will tell which will be worse. It is in Lebanon where you have extremist Christians calling for revolution, overthrow, and a Christian state; extremist Shiites calling for an Iranian-style republic, and extremist Sunnis attempting revolution in Nahr al-Bared.

This reminds me of Thomas Friemdan’s New York Times article which I have blogged about twice; Democracy’s root: diversity. Tolerance and diversity are two things which both the Christian and Muslim faith’s value. Christianity preaches the love of thy neighbor as oneself; and Islam preaches that God has only created different groups to know one another. In both Christianity and Islam the person is not hated, his evil attributes are, and one must love good for all people. (If someone wants theological verification for at least the Muslim side of this please see Imam Nawawi’s Sharh Sahih Muslim on the hadith “None of you truly believe until you love for your brother what you love for yourself.”)

We must quit hating and seeing people as “Jew,” or “Christian,” or “Muslim,” or “Notherner,” but as human beings. If only the Lebanese had mastered this, then perhaps they would have evolved from their current condition to the bastion of Arab freedom.

Lebanon is a country that has been destroyed time and again, where sectarianism reigns supreme, but yet still has the will to hold on to the beauty which freedom is and has not fell into decay.

The great Syrian poet, Mohammad al-Maghout, a native of my city, said this about Lebanon, a few years ago before his death:

Do you miss Lebanon?
This is what I have to say to the Lebanese: Whether partisan, secular, materialistic or spiritual you must cling onto this fragment of freedom, the last little fragment that remains. This scrap is our salvation. Don’t let go: freedom is taken, not given…Â

Wise words

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Category: Lebanese Politics

Pew Poll on Lebanon - Crucial for all of those educated on the Middle East

Writing by abuhatem on Sunday, 18 of November , 2007 at 2:25 am

Pew released a report today on the results of its poll of the Lebanese population. There were some extremely interesting parts of that poll. Firstly, Saniora’s popularity is extremely high among Sunnis and Christians- and even 20% amongst Shiites. Secondly, 50% of Sunnis in Lebanon regard the U.S. positively, the highest in any Muslim country - comparable to Great Britain, of all countries. Christians also regard the U.S. positively with 80%, while Shiites absolutely do not with 7%.

One thing I found interesting was this:

The 2007 Global Attitudes Pew survey1 revealed that support for terrorism has declined in much of the Muslim world over the last five years, and the decline among Lebanese Muslims has been particularly dramatic: In 2002, 74% of Lebanese believed that suicide bombing and other forms of violence against civilians could often or sometimes be justified in order to defend Islam from its enemies; today, this number has dropped to 34%.

I think this is accurate. Support for terrorism did rise in the Muslim world especially after 9/11, the second Intifada, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. However, after the mass Muslim-on-Muslim ethnic cleansing in Iraq, the Hamas-led takeover of Gaza, and the take over of the Palestinian refugee camp Nahr al-Bared, as well as strong statements from Islamic scholars speaking out against terrorism, this support has turned around. People realize how dumb terrorism is, especially when it hits close to home - killing their own civilians, killing their own people. So people are starting to wake up. Al-Qaeda’s Bin Laden has even released a tape deploring the fact the Muslim world is turning against him and urging his followers to “avoid extremism.”

Maybe this is why, and I think people in the U.S. should read and know this:

 

There is at least one issue on which the Sunni, Shia, and Christian communities can agree however: antipathy toward Osama bin Laden. Only 1% of Sunnis, 2% of Shia, and 2% of Christians say they have a lot or some confidence in the al Qaeda leader to do the right thing in international affairs.

 

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Category: Lebanese Politics

Lebanon, the Hegelian Synthesis, and Compromise… weird combo

Writing by abuhatem on Monday, 12 of November , 2007 at 6:53 pm

I keep blogging about my favorite topic - Lebanon. Although I have mentioned the Berri plan in almost every post before, the fact of the matter is it is the only solution to the impending crisis. If there will be a solution, Berri’s plan will be it - and he is to be commended for trying to achieve a consensus. The NYTimes ran a piece on his plan a few months ago.

A group of intellectuals, members of parliament, and journalists signed a petition in the Lebanese English daily, The Daily Star yesterday rejecting a consensus candidate as a ruse for giving Syria more power in Lebanon. At the same time, Nasrallah has stated the other solution - electing a candidate by a majority vote of MPs - will be unacceptable and has urged President Lahoud to take action in creating another government.

So my friends, both sides are adamant about their stances and unwilling to compromise - the result - what we have all feared, the destruction of Lebanon. You may say that all sides are stuck between a rock and a hard place, and this is true to an extent, but if compromise is not found there will certainly be a worse situation.

And this is what politics is all about - compromise. This is the essence of Democracy. Back to another of my favorite topics, political theory, we can see in the writings of Robert Dahl - one of the greatest political scientists in this country’s history - that the essence of Democracy is compromise. Dahl envisioned the Democratic state as - polycarchy, or a government in which policy is influenced by competing lobbies, interest groups, branches of government, popular movements, etc. In the end - the solution is not the answer of one trumping the answer of all. It is the very hard middle place of compromise of consensus. There must be a middle place where everyone meets. Not everyone will get their way - the purpose of the institutions in a Democratic system on the policy making process are to “weed out,” policies which won’t work or which have no popular or elite support, and to come to a middle ground.

Or in the words of Hegel - thesis and antithesis lead to synthesis! Viola!

And so if we can’t compromise, we can’t get anything done, and everything will fail…

Please Lebanon!

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Category: Lebanese Politics

Lebanon Update

Writing by abuhatem on Sunday, 11 of November , 2007 at 5:53 pm

So alot has happened in Lebanon this weekend, the least of which is that, for the third time in a row (or is it fourth?), Presidential elections have been delayed until two days before Lahoud, the current President, must step down. Come on Berri and Sfeir, find someone already!

When it comes to foreign pressure, Russia has called for stability in Lebanon and urged the Syrians to stay out. And even Pope Benedict himself has commented on the matter saying, “this is a crucial passage, upon which depends the future of Lebanon and its institutions.”

Hezbollah’s leader Hasan Nasrallah has made the crisis even more explosive by recommending early parliamentary elections to diffuse the stalemate, and has stated that none will disarm his group.

And Cardinal Sfeir, the Lebanese Maronite religious leader who is supposed to find a peaceful solution to this crisis with speaker of the Parliament Nabih Berri has again called the impasse a “threat to the existence of Lebanon.”

The key to the whole thing, the reason why Sfeir and the Pope are right, come at the end of a piece on the Reuters newswire today:

The anti-Syrian parliamentary majority, with 68 MPs in the 127-seat house, has threatened to go ahead on its own with a presidential vote if no consensus candidate is found.

Nasrallah warned that the opposition would not recognise a president unless he is elected by two-thirds of MPs.

“Any president elected by a simple majority… will not be recognised by te opposition, which would consider him to be an impostor,” said the Hezbollah leader.

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Category: Lebanese Politics

Muslim commentary on politics, political philosophy, international relations, and economics. Specific interests: conservatism, natural law, free markets, American grand strategy, the Iraq war, Lebanese politics, and Arabic and Islamic poetry.