Word: arabism
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While Americans don their green today, the Bush administration is engaging in its favorite St. Patrick’s Day tradition: incurring the ire of the Arab lands. Last March it was the invasion of Iraq – not altogether well-received in the Arab world. This year the administration has created a fresh furor in the region with its “Greater Middle East Initiative” (GME): a plan to bring democracy and enterprise to every country from Morocco to Afghanistan. Or as a headline in the pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat glowingly described...
...election. "It would be a disaster and a disgraceful betrayal of principle," Kerry said in December, because stability can't come without security and Iraq is anything but secure. He says the U.S. needs more help in Iraq from the U.N. and all the parties in Europe and the Arab world that have an interest in Iraq's success. "George Bush has failed utterly in bringing them to the table," Kerry told TIME. "I find that an astounding gap in diplomacy...
...that Spain is about to buckle before the bombers: Zapatero immediately vowed that his "immediate priority is to fight terrorism in all its forms." Despite misgivings over the conduct of U.S. policy in the Arab world, the Socialists have supported Spain's close cooperation with the U.S. to weed out al-Qaeda cells. But they complained that the Iraq invasion had nothing to do with fighting terrorism, and instead had distracted and detracted from that struggle...
...Still, France and Germany aren't exactly crowing. The Madrid attack has reminded European leaders how much more vulnerable they are than the U.S. to terror attacks on their own soil for reasons of geography (the proximity of the Arab world), demography (large Arab immigrant populations) and the EU integration that has eliminated border crossings in much of the continent. At the urging of Germany, a special summit of EU foreign ministers meets later this week to coordinate responses and tighten security measures...
...avoid allowing divisions to strengthen the hand of that enemy. That logic suggests bin Laden and his leadership circle would see a call for war against Shiites as inherently dangerous to al-Qaeda's wider objectives. Which means the dynamic confronting the U.S. both in Iraq and the wider Arab world seldom conforms to the binary Sunni vs. Shiite simplicities of which some in Washington appear to be rather fond...