Winds of freedom, the smell of taking credit

There are a lot of good things happening in the Middle East - the the election of a Palestinian leader who actually appears to take seriously his obligation not to be a threat to his neighbours; the demands by the Lebanese people that Syria get out; and the way the Iraqi people were uncowed by terrorists and defiantly voted in the recent election.

Some conservative pundits are trying to hand George Bush the credit for all of this. More on what he does deserve credit for later. But some of this deserves debunking.

Lebanon has been chafing against Syrian occupation for a couple of years. Despite Syrian meddling, Lebanon's people have been managing to get anti-Syrian politicians onto the public stage with increasing ability. The former prime minister Hariri was quite open about it, which naturally was why he was assassinated. And we come to the real reason for the Lebanese protests - Syria overplayed its hand. Rather than working from the shadows, as they usually have, they did something that not even pan-Arabists could ignore, interfering blatantly for their own interests. Rather than seeing sentimentalism about "winds of change" blowing into multi-ethnic Lebanon from far-away Shiite Iraq, it should be plainly apparent we are seeing rather the now full blown symptoms of an always lingering unhappiness the Lebanese had about the results of the Lebanese civil war. This is the end game of something that started in the seventies. It is nothing the president has had any hand in, other than for rightly calling for an end to Syrian occupation (which the Saudis, French, and other Arabs have as well.)

The President deserves some praise for his work on the roadmap in the Palestinian situation, but arguably the real credit on this one goes to the grim reaper, for taking Arafat out of the picture. Just about any other head of state the Palestinians could elect was going to make a big improvement, but they elected someone who specifically intended to do business differently. Hopefully Abbas is a man of a certain will, and will not hesitate to weed out the evil in his people's midst, who have done their own people as much harm (in convincing them of the worth of their death cult) as they have the Israelis.

As to Iraq, this of course is where Bush has had a real hand in things. The war and occupation were botched badly. The war was launched on patently false premises, and the occupation was operated with too few soldiers under a viceroy (Bremer) who was far too imperial in rewriting Iraqi law. That said, when an election date came in view, Bush stuck to his guns and was resolute in seeing it through. So too were the Iraqis themselves, who deserve even more credit for risking life and limb to push past the terrorists and into the polling booths.

I suppose it is no surprise to see politicians (such as Mr. Bush) jostle to take credit for far more than they actually did. For years, we've seen Jimmy Carter take all the credit (at the expense of Begin and Sadat) for the Camp David accords, and depending on which spin you believe, Clinton, Bush Sr., or even Reagan for the prosperity of the 90s. But it is important to remember that just because a politician takes credit for something, does not mean he actually deserves that credit. :-)