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Ohio shows a big abortion vote and Allegheny County elects a socialist. Virginia goes Democrat. Big losses for the Republicans. Biden is probably strengthened, Younkin weakened. And, as the Middle East shows, politics are always local and short-sighted.
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Coloniailism and Governance
Hussain Abdul-Hussain has written an article on the Middle East about his assessment of an element of the local unrest. He argues that the charges of 'colonialism' is a smokescreen that obscures local Arab government failure.
This is a piece of it.
If Israel was the reason behind Arab problems, then its withdrawal from Lebanon and Gaza should have led to the improvement in government and living standards in these two territories. What happened was the opposite.
Between 2000 and 2023, the Lebanese economy collapsed as the country slid downwards on every governance indicator. In 1996, Lebanon ranked 109 of 191 countries in the “rule of law” category according to data service The Global Economy. By 2006, Lebanon had dropped to 126, and in 2021, Lebanon had slipped as far down as 162. Similarly, Lebanon has suffered the spread of corruption. In 2004, Lebanon ranked 97 out of 145 on the Corruption Perception Index. In 2022, Lebanon ranked 150 out of 180.
Like Lebanon, Gaza’s economy and governance performance indicators have fallen on every level.
Arab countries like Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, Sudan, and Libya have exercized sovereignty over every inch of their land for the past fifteen years or more. Yet all five countries are failing states. Their citizens are risking their lives, on boats of death, to cross the Mediterranean in order to live in the very same European countries against whose rule their own Arab ancestors fought decades ago. When French President Macron visited Lebanon in 2020, more than 50,000 Lebanese signed a petition addressed to him, in which they called on France to restore its mandate over Lebanon, which ended in 1943.
Arab failure in governing their sovereign countries is evidence that their problems stem from within, and that any real or constructive solutions will require a shift from blaming the West and Israel to a concerted effort of applying self-criticism and reform.
In so far as the de-colonization narrative of Western progressives insists on robbing Arabs and other natives of agency by exclusively blaming European colonialism, it fails to help the Arabs address their shortcomings. If anything, Western progressive rhetoric actually delays the desperately needed Arab day of reckoning. And it only reinforces the conservative Islamist agenda, the one championed by Islamist Iran and its protégé militias in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, and Gaza—all five, failing Arab states without a glimmer of hope for reform or improvement.
*Coloniailism and Governance
Hussain Abdul-Hussain has written an article on the Middle East about his assessment of an element of the local unrest. He argues that the charges of 'colonialism' is a smokescreen that obscures local Arab government failure.
This is a piece of it.
If Israel was the reason behind Arab problems, then its withdrawal from Lebanon and Gaza should have led to the improvement in government and living standards in these two territories. What happened was the opposite.
Between 2000 and 2023, the Lebanese economy collapsed as the country slid downwards on every governance indicator. In 1996, Lebanon ranked 109 of 191 countries in the “rule of law” category according to data service The Global Economy. By 2006, Lebanon had dropped to 126, and in 2021, Lebanon had slipped as far down as 162. Similarly, Lebanon has suffered the spread of corruption. In 2004, Lebanon ranked 97 out of 145 on the Corruption Perception Index. In 2022, Lebanon ranked 150 out of 180.
Like Lebanon, Gaza’s economy and governance performance indicators have fallen on every level.
Arab countries like Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, Sudan, and Libya have exercized sovereignty over every inch of their land for the past fifteen years or more. Yet all five countries are failing states. Their citizens are risking their lives, on boats of death, to cross the Mediterranean in order to live in the very same European countries against whose rule their own Arab ancestors fought decades ago. When French President Macron visited Lebanon in 2020, more than 50,000 Lebanese signed a petition addressed to him, in which they called on France to restore its mandate over Lebanon, which ended in 1943.
Arab failure in governing their sovereign countries is evidence that their problems stem from within, and that any real or constructive solutions will require a shift from blaming the West and Israel to a concerted effort of applying self-criticism and reform.
In so far as the de-colonization narrative of Western progressives insists on robbing Arabs and other natives of agency by exclusively blaming European colonialism, it fails to help the Arabs address their shortcomings. If anything, Western progressive rhetoric actually delays the desperately needed Arab day of reckoning. And it only reinforces the conservative Islamist agenda, the one championed by Islamist Iran and its protégé militias in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, and Gaza—all five, failing Arab states without a glimmer of hope for reform or improvement.
There is an irony here in that the world has risen above local politics; we are too integrated to have failed states--especially in crucial geographic and economic areas. The world can no more ignore these relatively small areas than the body can reject its liver. But, as the Americans have shown, all politics are local.
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