Friedman is high on Sistani. A modicum of freedom in the Middle East will depend upon leaders who create a vision that people can both believe and join. As Friedman points out, Arafat was against Israel, and violently so, not 'for the Palestinian people. I maintain that Arafat was a terrorist through and through and the region is markedly better off without him. To think he received the Nobel Peace Prize speaks volumes about how the people who make these choices think. They made a grievous error in awarding it to Arafat.
"The politics of negation has a deep and rich history in the Middle East, because so many leaders there are illegitimate and need to negate someone to justify their rule. What Mr. Sistani, the late Lebanese Sunni leader Rafik Hariri and the new Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas all have in common is that they rose to power by focusing on a positive agenda for their own people, not negating another."
No comments:
Post a Comment