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"US
President George W. Bush’s statement that Washington will be
adopting a new “forward strategy of freedom in the Middle East” was
not given much credence in Lebanon, as most observers agreed that it
would make no significant change in the superpower’s foreign policy
in the region."
"Aridi asserted
that the
US “wants to build democracies that promote Israeli interests,”
maintaining that historically the US interacts with authoritarian
regimes and terrorist groups when it serves its interests."
Addressing the National Endowment for
Democracy on Thursday, Bush said that “60 years of Western nations
excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East
did nothing to make us safe, because in the long run, stability
cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty.”
He also renewed criticism of what he called “despotic rule” in Iran
and Syria, and praised “positive development toward democracy” in
predominantly pro-American countries, such as Morocco, Bahrain,
Kuwait, Qatar, Yemen, Jordan and even Saudi Arabia.
Culture Minister Ghazi Aridi countered that the question now, as it
has always been, is about interests and not democracy as far as the
United States is concerned.
American policies in the Middle East will not change even if there
is an increase in pressure on regional regimes, because of the “lack
of confidence” that the coalition forces are facing in Iraq, he told
The Daily Star.
Aridi, who is a leading member of Druze leader Walid Jumblatt’s
Progressive Socialist Party, claimed that the goal of the US
administration was to replace existing regional authoritarian
regimes with “more useful and compliant regimes.”
He asserted that the
US “wants to
build democracies that promote Israeli interests,” maintaining that
historically the US interacts with authoritarian regimes and
terrorist groups when it serves its interests.
He
also questioned the style of democracy that the US wants to
introduce in the region.
“They preach about democracy and yet know nothing about it,” he
said, criticizing what he called the anti-democratic practices of
the
US
administration domestically and abroad.
“They talk about democracy and then forbid their media from showing
footage of the casualties of war, ban the publication of books, and
reject a poll that was conducted in Europe because they dislike its
results,” he said.
Aridi was referring to the Eurobarometer poll that was released
last week, which showed that 59 percent of the European Union’s
citizens think that
Israel is a
threat to the world.
Karim Pakradouni, the minister of state for administrative reform
and president of the Phalange Party, said Bush’s speech only served
electoral political interests and “addressed the American people
rather than the Arab world.”
