<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1" ?><rss version="2.0"><channel><title>washingtonpost.com - Jackson Diehl</title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/opinion/columns/diehljackson?nav=rss_opinion/columns/diehljackson</link><description>Jackson Diehl</description><language>en-us</language><ttl>15</ttl><image><title>washingtonpost.com</title><width>140</width><height>20</height><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com</link><url>http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/hp/image/wp_web.gif</url></image><item><title><![CDATA[A Tenuous Mideast Spring]]></title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64468-2005Apr18.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/diehljackson</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64468-2005Apr18.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/diehljackson</guid><pubDate>Sat, 23 Apr 2005 12:27:12 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[  BEIRUT  --  The crowds were out in the streets here again last week, flocking to Martyrs'  Square, headquarters for Lebanon's "independence" movement for the past two months. The occasion was the 30th anniversary of the beginning of the country's devastating civil war, but the mood was festive: Parents led their children by the hand through thousands of young people who waved red-and-white Lebanese flags and danced in the streets as a popular singer belted out patriotic songs. Hundreds waited to pay tribute at the grave of Rafiq Hariri, whose assassination launched the uprising; nearby, the outdoor cafes and restaurants he built over the war's rubble overflowed. The festival was organized in the name of Lebanese "unity"  --  and among these people, at least, it felt as if the mass movement that has arisen here, demanding an end to domination by Syria and the creation of a genuine democracy, was still going strong.]]></description><author> Jackson Diehl</author></item><item><title><![CDATA[Sharon's Gamble Rides on Bush]]></title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A42689-2005Apr10.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/diehljackson</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A42689-2005Apr10.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/diehljackson</guid><pubDate>Sat, 23 Apr 2005 12:27:12 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[  A year ago this week Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon arrived in Washington with a bold agenda: to obtain the support of President Bush for a unilateral Israeli solution to his country's conflict with the Palestinians. Abandoning a decade of efforts at negotiations  --  not to mention Bush's own "road map" for a two-state solution  --  Sharon aimed to withdraw from the Gaza Strip, then impose a border of Israel's choosing in the West Bank, fortified by walls and fences. Rather than seek accord with the Palestinians, whom he knew would never accept his terms, Sharon sought to anchor his initiative in a deal with Bush, whom he asked for an endorsement of Israel's eventual annexation of West Bank territory and its determination never to accept the return of Palestinian refugees. With diplomacy at an impasse and Yasser Arafat still master of his long-suffering people, Bush signed on.]]></description><author> Jackson Diehl</author></item><item><title><![CDATA[Chavez's Censorship]]></title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5755-2005Mar27.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/diehljackson</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5755-2005Mar27.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/diehljackson</guid><pubDate>Sat, 23 Apr 2005 12:27:12 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[  Venezuela's minister of communication and information, Andres Izarra, recently accused The Post and several other American media of being part of a campaign to defame Venezuela directed by the Bush administration and funded by the State Department. Apparently I drew Izarra's attention by writing several columns and editorials lamenting President Hugo Chavez's assault on press freedom and the independent  judiciary and his support for anti-democratic movements elsewhere in Latin America.]]></description><author> Jackson Diehl</author></item><item><title><![CDATA[Democracy From the Inside Out]]></title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A32571-2005Mar13.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/diehljackson</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A32571-2005Mar13.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/diehljackson</guid><pubDate>Sat, 23 Apr 2005 12:27:12 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[  Last week's mass demonstration by Hezbollah in the streets of Beirut was commonly described as a check on the Middle East's first mass movement for freedom, and a setback for the United States and its regional allies. It could be. But it might also serve as a starting point for the necessary next phase of the Arab awakening, which is the incorporation of Hezbollah, Hamas and other Islamic movements into the region's new politics.]]></description><author> Jackson Diehl</author></item><item><title><![CDATA[A Mideast Makeover?]]></title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58850-2005Feb27.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/diehljackson</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58850-2005Feb27.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/diehljackson</guid><pubDate>Sat, 23 Apr 2005 12:27:12 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[  As thousands of Arabs demonstrated for freedom and democracy in Beirut and Cairo last week, and the desperate dictators of Syria and Egypt squirmed under domestic and international pressure, it was hard not to wonder whether the regional transformation that the Bush administration hoped would be touched off by its invasion of Iraq is, however tentatively, beginning to happen.]]></description><author> Jackson Diehl</author></item><item><title><![CDATA[Egypt's Gamble]]></title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A21976-2005Feb13.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/diehljackson</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A21976-2005Feb13.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/diehljackson</guid><pubDate>Sat, 23 Apr 2005 12:27:12 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[   The appearance  of Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit and intelligence chief Omar Suleiman in Washington this week should bring to a head a bold attempt by their country's strongman, Hosni Mubarak, to neuter President Bush's campaign for democracy in the Middle East within weeks of his inaugural address.]]></description><author> Jackson Diehl</author></item><item><title><![CDATA[How Bush Could Fight Tyranny]]></title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50119-2005Jan30.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/diehljackson</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50119-2005Jan30.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/diehljackson</guid><pubDate>Sat, 23 Apr 2005 12:27:12 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[  President Bush now says his inaugural address outline of a global U.S. campaign against tyranny was merely an ideal, not a plan for policy. Fair enough; no one really believes an overnight reversal in American relations with Russia or China makes sense. But last week's backtracking raised a depressing possibility: that Bush will make no significant alterations in foreign relations after promising, in an address fastidiously styled for history books, "the greatest achievements in the history of freedom." If so, his second term will simply compound the damage of his first to U.S. global prestige and influence; both dictators and dissidents will conclude that America's proclamations can be dismissed as hollow and hypocritical. Bush himself will be remembered as one of the greatest blowhards in U.S. history.]]></description><author> Jackson Diehl</author></item><item><title><![CDATA[Trouble In Our Back Yard]]></title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14729-2005Jan16.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/diehljackson</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14729-2005Jan16.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/diehljackson</guid><pubDate>Sat, 23 Apr 2005 12:27:12 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[   The Bush administration expects to focus much of its attention in a second term on promoting a political transformation of the Arab Middle East. But it may also have to spend some time on a parallel problem: preventing the unraveling of the democratic change the United States successfully  nurtured a generation ago.]]></description><author> Jackson Diehl</author></item><item><title><![CDATA[Battle for Belarus]]></title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A43488-2005Jan2.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/diehljackson</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A43488-2005Jan2.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/diehljackson</guid><pubDate>Sat, 23 Apr 2005 12:27:12 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[  Some of the most excited young people camping in Kiev's Independence Square during Ukraine's democratic revolution were not even Ukrainian. They were leaders of the youth group Zubr, of neighboring Belarus. In Minsk in October, Zubr's street protests against the fraudulent elections of a Russian-backed dictatorship were brutally crushed by security forces, and appeared almost quixotic. Then Ukrainians showed them that such a movement could triumph -- and that the wave of autocracy rolling from Moscow across the former republics of the Soviet Union could be turned back.]]></description><author> Jackson Diehl</author></item><item><title><![CDATA[Sidestepping Palestinian Democracy]]></title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12531-2004Dec19.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/diehljackson</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12531-2004Dec19.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/diehljackson</guid><pubDate>Sat, 23 Apr 2005 12:27:12 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[President Bush's new demand that an Israeli-Palestinian peace process begin with the establishment of a Palestinian democracy has met little resistance in Washington or in Ramallah, where authorities are busy organizing two sets of elections -- one for president and another for  municipal offices -- in the next three weeks. But it is viewed with pervasive skepticism in a seemingly unlikely quarter: the Middle East's only current democracy, Israel.]]></description><author> Jackson Diehl</author></item><item><title><![CDATA[Russia's Unchecked Ambitions]]></title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38380-2004Dec5.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/diehljackson</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38380-2004Dec5.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/diehljackson</guid><pubDate>Sat, 23 Apr 2005 12:27:12 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[   Steven Theede, chief executive of the Russian oil company Yukos, sadly observed during a visit to Washington last week that most Western investors had convinced themselves that the persecution and incipient takeover of his company by the Russian government was an isolated incident -- rather than an integral part of President Vladimir Putin's emerging authoritarianism. "They don't want to believe it's a broader issue," he said. So they ignore the obvious: "If it can happen to Yukos," Theede said, "it can happen again."]]></description><author> Jackson Diehl</author></item><item><title><![CDATA[Fallujah's Fallout]]></title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3158-2004Nov21.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/diehljackson</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3158-2004Nov21.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/diehljackson</guid><pubDate>Sat, 23 Apr 2005 12:27:12 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[   Last week Arab satellite channels replayed -- over and over again, in slow motion, with special graphics and explanatory narration -- the videotape of an American Marine appearing to shoot a wounded insurgent inside a mosque in Fallujah. They meanwhile declined to show the tape, made available the same day, of a terrorist firing a bullet into the head of Margaret Hassan, a British humanitarian worker whose abduction outraged many Iraqis.]]></description><author> Jackson Diehl</author></item><item><title><![CDATA[Sharon's Reason To Mourn]]></title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A33065-2004Nov7.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/diehljackson</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A33065-2004Nov7.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/diehljackson</guid><pubDate>Sat, 23 Apr 2005 12:27:12 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[   For the Israelis who hated and feared him, the Palestinians who chafed at his corruption, or the Western and Arab diplomats who despaired at his mendacity and unwillingness to settle the conflict that was his life's work, Yasser Arafat's apparently imminent death is the best news to sweep a turbulent Middle East since before  Sept. 11. But for his greatest nemesis, Ariel Sharon, it is a potential disaster -- one that threatens to undo what has been a smooth and highly advantageous relationship with President Bush.]]></description><author> Jackson Diehl</author></item><item><title><![CDATA[Putin's Unchallenged Imperialism]]></title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A59942-2004Oct24.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/diehljackson</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A59942-2004Oct24.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/diehljackson</guid><pubDate>Sat, 23 Apr 2005 12:27:12 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[   Imagine that an imperial-minded president resolved to aggressively intervene in a strategic country with a fragile democracy to ensure the election of a favored client. To do so, he summoned his nominee and publicly embraced him; channeled hundreds of millions of dollars to his campaign; arranged for television stations broadcasting in the target country to openly boost the favorite and slander his opponent; opened hundreds of polling stations in his own country so that "expatriates"  could vote; and, to top it off, scheduled a trip to the foreign capital three days before the election  to stump in person.]]></description><author> Jackson Diehl</author></item><item><title><![CDATA[An Opening For Arab Democrats]]></title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23012-2004Oct10.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/diehljackson</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23012-2004Oct10.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/diehljackson</guid><pubDate>Sat, 23 Apr 2005 12:27:12 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[   Drowned out by the bombings in Iraq, and the debate over whether the staging of elections there is an achievable goal or a mirage, the Bush administration's democracy initiative for the rest of the Middle East creeps quietly forward. In neo-realist Washington, it is usually dismissed -- when it is remembered at all -- in much the same way that, say, national elections in Afghanistan were once laughed off. The unpopularity of the Bush administration and the predictable resistance from the dictatorships of Egypt and Saudi Arabia are cited as proof that the region's hoped-for "transformation" is going nowhere.]]></description><author> Jackson Diehl</author></item><item><title><![CDATA[From Jenin To Fallujah?]]></title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52801-2004Sep26.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/diehljackson</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52801-2004Sep26.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/diehljackson</guid><pubDate>Sat, 23 Apr 2005 12:27:12 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[   Two and a half years ago this week, the Israeli army launched an offensive against the Palestinian towns of Jenin, Nablus, Ramallah and Bethlehem -- which, it said, had become havens for extremist groups and suicide bombers who made daily life in Israel unbearable. Images of flattened houses and civilian casualties soon filled the world's television screens: Palestinian spokesmen claimed, falsely, that thousands were being massacred. U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan declared himself "appalled." President Bush publicly called on Israel to withdraw "without delay." Some editorial writers -- such as this one -- argued that the offensive would do more harm than good.]]></description><author> Jackson Diehl</author></item><item><title><![CDATA[Refusing to Whitewash Abu Ghraib]]></title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17060-2004Sep12.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/diehljackson</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17060-2004Sep12.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/diehljackson</guid><pubDate>Sat, 23 Apr 2005 12:27:12 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[Cynics will not be surprised to learn that senior military commanders and Bush administration officials are on the verge of avoiding any accountability for the scandal of prisoner abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan -- despite the enormous damage done by that affair to U.S. standing in Iraq and around the world; despite the well-documented malfeasance and possible criminal wrongdoing by those officials; despite the contrasting prosecution of low-ranking soldiers.]]></description><author> Jackson Diehl</author></item><item><title><![CDATA[How Torture Came Down From the Top]]></title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37221-2004Aug26.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/diehljackson</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37221-2004Aug26.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/diehljackson</guid><pubDate>Sat, 23 Apr 2005 12:27:12 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[   The latest official reports on the prisoner abuse scandal contain a classic Washington contradiction. Their headlines proclaim that no official policy mandated or allowed the torture of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that no officials above the rank of colonel deserve prosecution or formal punishment. But buried in their hundreds of pages of detail, for anyone who cares to read them, is a clear and meticulous account of how decisions made by President Bush, his top political aides and senior military commanders led directly to those searing images of naked prisoners being menaced with guard dogs.]]></description><author> Jackson Diehl</author></item><item><title><![CDATA[A Missile From the  South]]></title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A33130-2004Aug1.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/diehljackson</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A33130-2004Aug1.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/diehljackson</guid><pubDate>Sat, 23 Apr 2005 12:27:12 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[  Not long ago, in the middle of one of the four-hour talkathons he stages weekly on national television, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez grabbed a baseball bat and made the following declaration: "Fidel: Look out! The home run will go precisely over the city of Havana. This will happen on Aug. 15. I am going to hit [it] so hard that it will land in the gardens of the White House!"]]></description><author> Jackson Diehl</author></item><item><title><![CDATA[Officers' Unheroic Example]]></title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A60577-2004Jul18.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/diehljackson</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A60577-2004Jul18.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/diehljackson</guid><pubDate>Sat, 23 Apr 2005 12:27:12 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[   Washington convention dictates that all sides in the debate on Iraq begin by stipulating that U.S. armed forces have performed "magnificently" and "heroically," and, implicitly, bear no blame for any of the messes. Perhaps that's mostly true -- but the boilerplate rhetoric risks perpetuating a culture of impunity among senior American military commanders.]]></description><author> Jackson Diehl</author></item></channel></rss>
