Thursday, February 3, 2005 |
14:13 - Leonard Cohen, eat your heart out
http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7§ion=0&article=58456&d=3&m=2&y=2005&pix=opinion.j
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Wow. In the Arab News, of all places. Chances are that time and distance will make the impact of Sunday's elections fade behind more doubt and quagmire and "perspective", as with every other positive milestone since 9/11; but for now, at least, it's time to highlight it all so it lasts as long as possible. Here's what Saudi Dr. Mohammed T. Al-Rasheed has to say:
Bravo Iraq! For history, Jan. 30, 2005, is one magnificent day for Iraq and the Arab nation. Regardless of who won and who lost, the day should be a permanent fixture on the Arab calendar forever. I don’t want to talk politics; I simply want to celebrate history.
In spite of everything, the Iraqis voted. They did so with a passion and a seriousness that gives the lie to the cliché that Arabs are not ready for democracy. One myth down, a thousand to go.
Everyone says that this is the first free elections in Iraq for fifty years. That is another lie. There has never been one single free election in the long history of the Arabs ever. This is the first one.
It took the Americans to conduct it and force it down the throats of dictators, terrorists, exploding deranged humans, and odds as big as the distance between the USA and the Middle East.
British guns and soldiers were in the area for so long yet did not care to look at the people.
They waltzed with people Gerty and Lawrence (their colonial spies) baptized and were happy to see the nations slip into slavery.
Likewise, the French could not bring themselves to see that the Arabs were good enough to cast a vote. And even when it happened in Algeria, the French orchestrated a putsch to annul it.
On Sunday America vindicated itself to all doubters, including me. They delivered on the promise of an election, so I am sure they will deliver on the promise of withdrawal.
. . .
Perhaps in the coming weeks we will take issue with America again. But for today, I am celebrating by having a McDonald’s. I hate fast food, but for this day I will make an exception.
Since people like Michael Moore are MIA, Robert Fisk is eating cardboard, Aaron McGruder is off on irrelevant tangents, and Garry Trudeau is entertaining fantasies of visceral racial hatred among soldiers whose primary charge in Iraq is spotting insurgents in a sea of friendly or indifferent Iraqi faces they're sworn to defend, maybe there's a chance that people like Dr. Al-Rasheed might get taken seriously, even if just for a day or two. Maybe that's all it will take for the world to realize that something has changed: even if everything up till the very present day was about imperialism and hegemony, now it's not. The facts on the ground are too obvious to ignore now. It's all been faith and presumption, but now we know.
And knowing is half the battle. (Right, Guardian?)
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