Democracy Now: Juan Cole & Juan Cole & Osama Siblani
Earlier today, Amy Goodmantalked with Professor Juan Cole and Osama Siblani, editor of The Arab-American News, about issues surrounding the Middle East, both in terms of U.S. foreign policy as well as here at home and how Arab Americans and Arab immigrants have been affected by the Bush administration's so-called war on terror.
Juan Cole:
"The Lebanese have been having parliamentary elections for decades and were among the few to have fairly upright such elections at some points in the 20th century in the Arab world. So, they haven't learned anything from the Iraqi elections. In fact, . the elections in Iraq were a mixture of the sublime and the ridiculous.. I mean, it was a wonderful thing, people came out and risked their lives to vote, but they didn't know the names of the candidates that they were voting for because of the poor security conditions, and the country had to be locked down for three days. No vehicular traffic at all in the entire country in order to prevent car bombings, so that the elections could be held.
So I think most urbane, sophisticated Beirutis would have looked upon this process in Iraq with a little bit of pity, and . there's nothing inspiring there for them.. They already had the elections in their country scheduled for May. What happened in Lebanon was local.
I think we're going to see a lot of this -- everything that happens in the Middle East from now on is going to be pegged to the Bush administration regardless of whether the Bush administration had anything to do with it, but there's now, I think, a political struggle inside Lebanon, between those groups, especially the Christian Maronites, the Druze, and a section of the Sunnis who want an early end to the Syrian military occupation and an end to over-weaning Syrian influence in Lebanese politics on the one hand, and then Hezbollah and the generality of the Shiite community, I think, as well as another section of the Sunni community that actually wants the Syrians to continue to play a role."
Osama Siblani:
"He [ George W. Bush ] told me just straight to my face, among 12 or maybe 13 republicans at that time here in Michigan at the hotel. I think it was on May 17, 2000, even before he became the nominee for the Republicans. He told me that he was going to take him out, when we talked about Saddam Hussein in Iraq. And I said, ‘Well, you know, I totally disagree with you. You just can’t go around taking leaders out of their countries, you know. Let the Iraqi people do it. They can't do it on empty stomachs. Lift sanctions. Keep the pressure on Saddam Hussein, but lift the sanctions on the Iraqi people. People can't make moves on an empty stomach. Once they start establishing, you know, a connection with the United States and helping democracy inside, they will overthrow him.’ And then he said, ‘We have to talk about it later.’ But at that time he was not privy to any intelligence, and the democrats had occupied the White House for the previous eight years. So, . he was not privy to any intelligence whatsoever. He was not the official nominee of the Republican Party, so he didn't know what kind of situation the weapons of mass destruction was at that time.. But what I am saying now is the President is trying to claim credit for something that really had nothing to do with him."