Why am I not surprised that Kevin Drum considers a news station with strong terrorist links an "important driver of democracy", but criticizes attempts by the administration to actually BE an important driver of democracy? The most prominent example would, of course, be Iraq.

This is what happens when you let a bunch of hysterical nincompoops run foreign policy. We don't know what the hell our strategy is in the Middle East, so nobody else does.

Strongest nation on earth acting unpredictably and incoherently in a vital region? Yeah, that's gonna help make the world more peaceful, stable, and democratic.

Idiots.

Why am I not surprised that Kevin Drum considers a news station with strong terrorist links an "important driver of democracy", but criticizes attempts by the administration to actually BE an important driver of democracy?

Actually, Kevin Drum seems to be noting both the US government and al-Jazeera going wobbly on promoting democracy, and saying the latter failure is more significant than the latter because the US government has less capacity even if it wasn't wobbly.

Not to worry, Al-Jazeera will learn to use indepedents and contractors to gather the video it needs. The Egyptian democracy movement is reasonably big news in the Middle East, and Al Jazeera wants to make a buck.

speaking of "the region", here's a good one about Iraq.

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/Production/files/Taheri_0606.htm

What's the US-sponsored Alhurra network doing? If the US wants to encourage democracy in region it could have Alhurra cover it.

Another piece for the "Bush tax cuts are working!" trolls:

Leading indicators dip; jobless claims up

MAY. 18 11:11 A.M. ET A barometer of America's economic activity slipped in April, while the number of people signing up for jobless benefits rose sharply last week, according to reports released Thursday.

The big jump in filings for jobless benefits was mainly due to the lingering effects of a partial government shutdown in Puerto Rico. But the dip in the Conference Board's Index of Leading Indicators more clearly pointed to slowing economic activity ahead.

----------

So, trolls, did the tax cut magic stop working all of a sudden? What happened?

A full day after taxes are cut and the economy doesn't improve. We are in serious trouble now.

Why am I not surprised that Kevin Drum considers a news station with strong terrorist links an "important driver of democracy", but criticizes attempts by the administration to actually BE an important driver of democracy? The most prominent example would, of course, be Iraq.

Actually Kevin Drum supported the war in the early going, catching much grief from the commentariat.

I'd think it's something we could all agree on that the light of day needs to shine on Egypt right now. Al Jazeera needs to get a pair and push this stuff to the front. It is the top headline on thier English hweb page at the moment, but not 5the Arabic version (based on pictures they use).

http://english.aljazeera.net
http://www.aljazeera.net

The Libya point is, IMHO, even more important.
Pretty much every commentator on the Middle East who actually knows something about the subject, even heavy duty conservatives like Bernard Lewis, agree that the major driver of radical Islam is not religion or some sort of clash of civilizations; it is that
(1) these countries offer no political outlet and no organized non-state actors except religion and
(2) the US is the prime supporter of these dictatorships, hence whatever anger and frustration arises from the local situation is directed at the US.

Clearly GWB, in spite of his claims of having studied the subject (including reading at least one of Lewis' books) has learned absolutely nothing from history.

Well if the US government had put pressure on Egypt to get the Al-Jazeera journalist released themselves then Al-Jazeera might not be in this position. And the US government would have a lot of leverage to get this done. They do give Egypt a billion dollars a year or so.

It could be done quietly behind the scenes so that the Egyptian government can be seen as wisely opening up to democracy rather than caving in to US pressure and the US government does not have to explain why its supporting a TV station it disagrees with. This is the kind of quiet behind the scenes democracy support that should be going on.

Or even better, it could be done publicly so that the US could demonstrate by actions rather than words that it believes in freedom of speech and democracy by helping someone it disagrees with and getting a genuine result that Arabs can actually see.

Jim Lund--

I know one thing Al-Hurra is doing. Not getting watched.

Oh wait, here's another one: wasting our taxes.

american hawk: please go and do some research. when you find any solid evidence (and i mean solid, dude), about al jazeera's "strong terrorist links", then post them up. if you ever do decide to actually examine the issue, you'll find that al jazeera has been instrumental in promoting democratic dialogue and free speech in the arab world.

Marc Lynch writes "have been taken by many Arab democracy advocates as a clear message"

Care to give at least 1 name to represent these "many" advocates?

Probably not. More opinion masquerading as journalism. Yawn.

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