Bush administration plans for "the world's wealthiest nations to declare their support for democracy in the Middle East" at the G8 Summit this week are backfiring. The declaration "has strained relations with several important allies in the Arab world," including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Morocco, Egypt and Pakistan. The declaration's original name, "Greater Middle East Initiative," was changed to "Broader Middle East and North African Initiative," in response to concerns that "greater" suggests "imperial ambitions." Besides the declaration controversy, "this is not the time to be seen with the American president," explained one Arab diplomat.
I guess not. We're going to have to coin a new word for democracy to indicate its limitation to American-style.
The only plans Bush has for the world's wealthiest nations is to declare their support for whatever the U.S. does in the Middle East and pony up.
Missing from the list of invited Arab countries was Qatar, snubbed because it hosts the Al Jazeera network. "It's strange, having a summit declaration on democratic reforms and not inviting a country because it has a free press," remarked another diplomat.
What ignorant babies. But, if the "invited" countries weren't also ignorant babies, they would have all declined the invitation in response to such a juvenile and counterproductive play.
Update 2:00 pm: Juan Cole:
"In an effort to demonstrate engagement with Arabs on the issues, Mr Bush invited the leaders of a number of Islamic countries to attend a lunch on Wednesday with G8 leaders, at their own expense. But leaders of some key nations, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Morocco, turned down the invitation, and Qatar was purposely snubbed because of administration anger at al-Jazeera's coverage of the Iraq war. Ms Rice cited scheduling issues as the reason Morocco and Egypt - one of the effort's harshest critics - will not appear."
That sounds pretty sad.
