Democracy for Palestinians: Bush's bold plan for Mideast peace

So much for all those leaks about President Bush endorsing a new, interim Palestinian state. The long-awaited speech Mr. Bush actually delivered yesterday was far more daring, and potentially a major leap forward in U.S. Middle East diplomacy.

The fear among many, including us, was that after several vicious weeks of suicide bombings, Mr. Bush would seem to be rewarding Palestinian terror. Some in the State Department were pushing a speech that would have done precisely that.

This is truly the only way forward, and I was surprised by the speech-- not that Bush saw it, but that he was willing to override Powell and the career bureaucrats in the State Department. It has given me hope, and reassurred me of the steadiness of Bush's moral vision.

There is another example in the middle east-- I believe it is Bahrain, where the western-educated king is steadily moving his country towards democracy in exactly this fashion. Also, of course, there is Turkey. The truth is that ALL people everywhere desire freedom and self-determination, along with the economic benefits that accrue to capitalist societies.

We need to fan the winds of freedom over there-- carefully, though, so that totalitarian dictators and kings aren't merely replaced with totalitarian Islamic dictatorships. I think that if we take down Saddam Hussein and start helping Iraqis build a democratic government (like we're doing in Afghanistan), the Iranians will take courage from that (and from our presence so close) and overthrow their own government. The two other governments that need to go are, of course, Syria and Saudi Arabia. Syria will require force, but it is possible that the Saudi kings will step aside peacefully-- with forceful encouragement from a determined U.S. government.

Let freedom ring!

It's important to understand how radical this idea of democracy is for Palestine. For years the U.S. and Israel both winked at the brutality of Arab leaders, in the Faustian hope that they would provide "stability" and "peace." This was the flaw at the heart of the Oslo peace process, in which the U.S. sub-contracted with Yasser Arafat to stop attacks against Israel. But this was impossible as long as Mr. Arafat and other Palestinian leaders derived all of their political legitimacy from the struggle against Israel.

Yesterday Mr. Bush said this day is over. "Today the elected Palestinian legislature has no authority, and power is concentrated in the hands of an unaccountable few," he said, adding that, "Palestinian authorities are encouraging, not opposing, terrorism. This is unacceptable."

In short, if Palestinians want the world to recognize them as a state, then they need to behave like a civilized one. That means democratic institutions, with leaders who win their legitimacy through the ballot box. It means functioning courts, not summary executions of collaborators. And it also means what Mr. Bush called "an externally supervised effort to rebuild and reform the Palestinian security services."

Perhaps the best part of the speech was the name Mr. Bush never mentioned: Yasser Arafat. By ignoring him, the President was signaling to ordinary Palestinians that their old ways and old leaders will not bring them the freedom they seek. "For decades you've been treated as pawns in the Middle East conflict," Mr. Bush said. "If liberty can blossom in the rocky soil of the West Bank and Gaza, it will inspire millions of men and women around the globe."

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We've worried recently that Mr. Bush was losing his way in the Middle East, allowing himself to get bogged down in Palestine instead of focusing on the war on terror. But yesterday's speech lifted him out of that morass and put him firmly on the side of a new and very different Middle East, one with democracy at its core. It's a message we think will have surprising resonance in the Arab world, not least among the people of Iraq, Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Excellent! See this GREAT commentary by JohnHuang2, also!:

Ultimatum from the Rose Garden
A MUST Read !
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/705519/posts

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