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The
Christian Science Monitor
In
Iran hopes for democracy dwindle -- Once seen as
the most vigorous democratic impulse in the Islamic world, Iran's reform movement
is battling for political survival
By: Scott Peterson
The
Washington Post:
Laurels for an Iranian revolutionary
-- Today's award to Shirin is a signal that Iranians
working for human rights will have the support of the world. It is indeed a type
of political interference -- but it is without bombs, missiles or military occupation,
and it is supported by the Iranian people
By: Mehrangis
Kar
The
Yahoo News:
Scientists to excavate Iraqi graves --
The killers kept bankers' hours. They showed up
for work at the barley field at 9 a.m., trailed by backhoes and three buses filled
with blindfolded men, women and children as young as 1. Every day, witnesses say,
the routine was the same: The backhoes dug a trench. Fifty people were led to
the edge of the hole and shot, one by one, in the head. The backhoes covered them
with dirt, then dug another hole for the next group. At 5 p.m., the killers —
officials of Saddam Hussein Baath Party — went home to rest up for another
day of slaughter
By: Niko Price
The
Christian Science Monitor:
Democracy from scratch
-- "The point of these councils is to move
the country from a top-down system where everything was ordered and based on oppression
to one where ordinary Iraqis take on the task of representing citizens, not controlling
them,"
By: Howard LaFranchi
The
National Review:
Iranian seek fundamental change
-- "Of all the tyrannies that affect mankind,
tyranny in religion is the worst; every other species of tyranny is limited to
the world we live in; but this attempts to stride beyond the grave, and seeks
to pursue us into eternity."
By: Koorosh Afshar
The
Christian Science Monitor:
The Mideast as arc of
freedom - or false
hope -- As Bush touts the Mideast as another Soviet
bloc ripe for change, critics see a blend of rhetoric and rationalization
By:
Peter Grier & Faye Bowers
The
Washington Post:
Winning the guerilla war -- the
Bush administration can focus on and accomplish achievable goals in a whirlwind
of conflict. That means focusing on changing the gangster culture of Iraq and
neighboring countries, not on changing the Islamic or Arab culture of the Middle
East
By: Jim Hoagland
The
Washington Times:
Bush targets Middle East 'Elites'
-- " Mr. Bush told a British think tank devoted
to foreign policy. "Your nation and mine in the past have been willing to
make a bargain to tolerate oppression for the sake of stability.
"Long-standing
ties often led us to overlook the faults of local elites," he said. "Yet
this bargain did not bring stability or make us safe. It merely bought time while
problems festered and ideologies of violence took hold."
By:
Bill Sammon
The
Washington Post:
Building Arab democracy -- strategy
of promoting Arab democratization would demolish the cynical "Islam is the
solution" myth propagated by the Islamists and would give ordinary citizens
a stake in the development of their own countries
By:
Hala Mustafa & David Makonsky
The
Washington Post:
Bush urges commitment to transform
Mideast -- "Iraqi democracy will succeed --
and that success will send forth the news, from Damascus to Tehran -- that freedom
can be the future of every nation," the president said. "The establishment
of a free Iraq at the heart of the Middle East will be a watershed event in the
global democratic revolution."
By: Dana Milbank
& Mike Allen
The
Yahoo News:
Bush: Mideast must move toward democracy
-- "Sixty years of Western nations excusing
and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us
safe — and in the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense
of liberty,"
By: Terence Hunt
The
New York Times:
Iraqi's at the wheel -- We
need more than an Iraqi police force. We need an Iraqi leader elected through
a constitutional or political process
By: Thomas L. Friedman
The
Christian Science Monitor:
Feeling under attack,
Arabs turn to Islam for answer -- With religious
leaders winning support as they promote the idea of resistance, political leaders
can't afford to stray far from that line. "All of these countries,"
says Schteiwi, "are walking a very thin rope."
By:
Howard LaFranchi
The
Christian Science Monitor:
Whispers of democracy
across the Middle East -- Ever so gently, the breezes
of change - we can't yet call them "winds" - are rippling across hitherto
repressed parts of the Islamic world
By:
John Hughs
The
New York Times:
Courageous Arab thinkers -- A
group of social scientists is fighting the war of ideas for the Arab future by
detailing just how far the Arab world has fallen behind
By:
Thomas L. Friedman
The
Washington Post:
Intellectuals who distrust freedom
-- American and European intellectuals have a history
of distrusting politicians and thinkers from oppressed countries who clamor for
the same political and economic freedoms that our savants enjoy. The clamorers
cannot represent authentic nationalism if all they want is to be just like us,
the reasoning seems to go
By: Jim Hoagland
The
National Review:
Shirin Ebadi is a trailblazer --
Giving the Nobel Peace Prize to Ebadi is a strong
signal from the democratic world to those Muslims who are fighting fascism disguised
as religion, often at great personal risk. The world of Islam is passing through
a civil war of ideas of a magnitude not seen since the 12th century. And, just
as in the 12th century, the fight is between those who wish to turn religion into
a weapon of rule by terror, and those who, like Ebadi, see faith as a personal
matter, to be worked out between the individual and God
By:
Amir Taheri
The
Christian Science Monitor:
What binds diverse peoples
-- The role of religion in people's lives worldwide
continues to get short shrift from both the media and policymakers in the increasingly
secularized West
By: Commentary
The
Scottish News:
The peace prize that could change
a nation
By: Gavin Esler
The
Asia Times:
Muslim Nobel Prize sends a powerful missage
-- The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Iran's
Shirin Ebadi on October 10 will be remembered as an important occasion for the
beginning of a new era of moderation and democracy in the world of Islam
By:
Ehsan Ahrari
The
CNN World News:
Nobel Peace Prize citation: full
text -- Her principal arena is the struggle for
basic human rights, and no society deserves to be labelled civilized unless the
rights of women and children are respected
The
National Review:
Edward Said and Ali Shariati didn't
get the west -- Edward Said, the American scholar
(born in Jerusalem) who died last week, is often regarded as the man who invented
the "blame-it-on-the-West" theory. His "Orientalism," a polemical
pamphlet masquerading as historical analysis, presented the study of the Muslim
world by European scholars as a "colonialist plot." The premise of the
polemic is simple: The West is an "imperialist" monster out to dominate
the world, devour its resources, impoverish other nations, and plunge mankind
into perpetual war
By: Amir Taheri
The
National Review:
Freedom for Iraq -- Freedom
is the Iraqis' choice. No one can give a people freedom and make them keep the
package. They have to take it
By: Andrew J. & Judith
S. Kleinfeld
The
Washington Post:
Beyond 'Nation Building' -- Iraq
also has a number of advantages -- oil wealth, water and an elaborate system of
irrigation canals, vast wheat and barley fields, biblical sites and the potential
for tourism, and an educated, urban population
By: Donald
H. Rumsfeld
The
New York Times:
The Martyr Complex --
only in Muslim cultures is religion-infused
war terminology so widely employed as a handmaiden of zealotry
By:
Eden Naby & Richard N. Frye
The
Washington Post:
Iraq's path to sovereignty
-- the path to full Iraqi sovereignty is clear. The journey has begun
By:
L. Paul Bremer III
The
Washington Post:
Iranian youths seeking
to escape -- Bleak Prospects Lead Some Toward Border,
Others to Drugs
By: Afshin Molavi
The
Washington Post:
Letting Iraq save itself
-- Iraqis have to take more responsibility for their country, and the only way
to achieve this goal is to give them the political power they have been demanding
By:
David Iqnatuis
The
National Review:
The latest horrors still
organized -- Iran remains the lynchpin of the terror network, and its leaders
are engaged in a life-or-death struggle with us in Iraq, knowing that if we succeed,
they are doomed
By: Michael Ledeen
The
Washington Post:
Why we must win in Iraq
-- Iraq must be important to us because it is so important to our enemies. That's
why they are opposing us so fiercely, and why we must win
John
McCain
The
National Review:
The Shiite choice -- Will
they learn the lesson of their history
BY: Amir Taheri
The
National Review:
We can not win in Iraq
without defeating all the terror masters -- Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia organize,
fund, and support the terror war in Iraq, but instead of supporting freedom fighters
in Iran to topple the world's major sponsor of terror, we plaintively implore
the mullahs to hand over some al Qaeda leaders so we can get on with lifting sanctions
and "normalizing" relations
By: Michael Ledeen
The
National Review:
Only half done, the future
is in Iraq -- None of the despotisms that are among Iraq's neighbors — Iran,
Saudi Arabia, and Syria — can continue if freedom blossoms in Iraq. So those
governments are actively involved in funding, supplying, and reinforcing the terrorists
and remnants of Saddam's regime fighting us in Iraq. Iraq cannot be free, and
its people finally liberated, unless and until we end the interference of those
governments
By: Jed Babbin
The
New York Times:
Fighting 'The Big One' --
"Your experience in Iraq is going to create two reactions: one is hypersensitivity,
led by the Islamists, and the other is welcoming, led by the secularists. [But
you have to understand] that what you are doing is a penetration of one culture
into another. If you succeed here, Iraq could change the habits and customs of
the people in the whole area."
By: Thomas L. Friedman
The
National Review:
Freedom is never free,
Iraq learns, so do the rest of us -- America has always come to the aid of those
who also yearned for freedom. After all, it is the responsibility of those who
are free to help those who are oppressed seize this God-given right. Without freedom,
we have nothing
By: Angela J. Phleps
The
Christian Science Monitor:
In Iran, clerics's
wealth draws ire -- "covenant of the meek," or social justice, was a
favorite catchphrase of the leaders of Iran's 1979 revolution. But it's made far
worse by the fact that the principal beneficiaries of wealth redistribution have
been the regime clerics and their closest allies
By:
Nicholas Birch
The
USA Today:
Visa lottery now online -- Foreigners
who want to participate in a lottery for immigrant visas must now do so online.
The State Department announced Monday it would no longer accept mailed or paper
applications for the diversity visa lottery
The
Washington Post:
Doing democracy right --
Arab rulers have created great cities and citadels throughout their realm. But
they have not produced a successfully functioning modern state
By:
Jim Hoagland
The
Washington Times:
Pakistani
Government is trying to control country's 8000 religous schools --Through a new
$255 million reform package, the Pakistani government is trying to do something
that has never been done before: wrest control of the country's 8,000 religious
schools from the mullahs. The clerics, obviously, have pledged to resist
By:
Anwar Igbal
The
National Review:
Iran - Contra revisited
-- Americans
are being murdered in Iraq and Afghanistan, in Jordan and Saudi Arabia, by terrorists
supported by Iran. Yet those who try to unravel the terror network are treated
as if they were somehow suspect, while those who appease Tehran pompously proclaim
the righteousness of their endeavors
By:
Michael Ledeen
The
National Review:
Iraq
takes another step toward self rule --It
is important to reassure the Iraqi people by presenting them with a realistic
timetable for enacting a new constitution and holding elections
By: Amir Taheri
The
Washington Post:
The
Arab stake in America's success -- a
sizable segment of the Iraqi population seems not to have gotten that message
of American resolve, or thought through the consequences of an American failure
here
By: Jim Hoagland
The
Washington Post:
U.S. promises democracy
in Middle East -- The administration secured $145 million this year for democracy,
education and economic initiatives in the Middle East. Many of the proposed projects
are small. Plans include campaign seminars in Qatar and Jordan for women throughout
the region
By: Peter Slevin
The
Washington Post:
Transforming
the Middle East -- "The world has a clear interest in the spread of democratic
values, because stable and free nations do not breed ideologies of murder. They
encourage the peaceful pursuit of a better life."
By:
Condoleezza Rice
The
National Review:
Arab Ironies, Iraq' s neighboring
detractors -- It is a tribute to the Iraqi Governing Assembly that it has scared
all the reactionary and despotic forces in the Arab world. Their fear is that
Iraq, as President George W. Bush has promised, will become a model of pluralist
democracy for the region as a whole
By: Amir Taheri
The
National Review:
Algeria's prospect -- A
significant battleground in the Muslim world
By: Amir
Taheri
The
New York Times:
A new mideast -- When you
see Iraqis risking their lives to protect and nurture their new infant self-ruling
authority, when you see Palestinians ready to take on the extremists in their
midst because they are a cancer on the Palestinians' own future, and when you
see a Bush administration ready to pay any price and bear any burden, economic
or political, to help them both, then you can legitimately start to speak again
about a "new Middle East."
By: Thomas L. Friedman
The
National Review:the:
Muslim scholars miss
a great opportunity -- challenge that most
Muslim peoples face today is a political, rather than religious, one. It is perfectly
possible for Muslims to develop a modern and democratic society in the era of
globalization. But to do that they have to understand that religion is part of
life, not the other way around as the theopolitical discourse suggests
By:
Amir Taheri
The
Washington Post:
Middle East: The Realities
-- every country from the Khyber Pass to the Mediterranean Sea. Everywhere you
look, the forces of moderation have been strengthened. This is a huge strategic
advance not just for the region but for the world, because this region in its
decades-long stagnation has incubated the world's most virulent anti-American,
anti-Western, anti-democratic and anti-modernist fanaticism
By:
Charles Krauthammer
The
Christian Science Monitor:
The nonviolent
script for Iran -- Cheerleading from Washington is not a policy. It makes Iranian
protesters appear to be doing America's bidding, and covert support for violent
action would undercut their legitimacy. What's needed is a more strategic resistance
by the Iranian opposition, unified behind clear political goals, backed by broader
civilian participation, using tactics that divide the clerics and their military
defenders. The Iranian people have the drive, the intelligence, and the capability
to make such a strategy work - and that is what the world's democracies should
assist
By: Peter Acherman & Jack DuVall
The
Washington Post:
The
neoliberal take on the Middle East -- Sept. 11, 2001, taught us the price we pay
for ignoring the underlying problems of the region. The question now is how best
to transform the Middle East so that it no longer produces people who want to
kill us in great numbers and increasingly have the ability to do so
By:
Ronald D. Asmus & Kenneth M. Pollack
The
Washington Post:
It's too soon for democracy
-- The most urgent political task in Iraq today is not building democracy. Iraqis
are suffering from something much more basic than the lack of democracy -- the
lack of state administration
By: Thomas Carothers
The
New York Times:
Why religion must play a
role in Iran
By: Reza Aslan
The
Christian Science Monitor:
Islam's internal
struggle -- intolerant groups seek to monopolize the faith
Commentary
The
New York Times:
Rumbing in Iran -- By breathing
on the spark of freedom and leading the increase of pressure on a crumbling dictatorship,
we may be able to limit the spread of nuclear weapons in Iran.
By:
William Safire
The
New York Times:
A theory of everything --
After 9/11 people wondered, "Why do they hate us?" speaking of the Muslim
world. After the Iraq war debate, the question is, "Why does everybody else
hate us?"
By: Thomas L. Friedman
The
National Review:
The mullahs can not reform
-- U.S. diplomacy needs to face reality
By: Roozbeh Farahanipour
The
National Review:
The Iranian people hold
their destiny in their own hands - regime change in the air
By:
Michael Ledeen
