Monday, August 14, 2006

What?   [Andy McCarthy]

Among several highly disputable things the President said at his press conference today was this:  "Elected leaders cannot have one foot in the camp of democracy and one foot in the camp of terror."  

That's a remarkable statement given that (a) Lebanese Prime Minister Siniora has spent the last couple of weeks praising Hezbollah, thanking it for fighting Israel on behalf of Lebanon, and doing his best to protect it from being disarmed by an international force, while the U.S. has propped him up (and the President had nothing but nice things to say about the fledgling Lebanese "democracy" today); and (b) Hezbollah, which has already been elected into this "democracy" now stands to increase its influence in it in light of its strength and prowess, which the Lebanese are likely to see as more reassuring than Siniora's patent weakness.

If we are going to pretend that popular elections equal democracy, and the voters proceed to vote for terrorists, why is it not the case that elected leaders certainly can have one foot in the camp of democracy and the other in the camp of terror?  The two are not mutually exclusive, however much we may wish it were otherwise.

08/14 07:51 PMShare