Word: pro-western
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...draped in the Lebanese national flag and sprinkled with rose petals. Shot dead Sunday evening during street fighting between Sunni and Shi'ite youths, the 20-year-old Mahmoud is being lionized by the Hizballah-led opposition as the first "martyr" of its protest campaign to topple the pro-Western government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora. But some Lebanese fear that Mahmoud may be remembered as the first casualty of a new civil...
SAAD HARIRI, son of assassinated former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, on last week's murder of Cabinet Minister Pierre Gemayel, the latest in a string of killings since 2005 of pro-Western leaders who opposed influence from neighboring Syria...
...Beirut in the early '80s, I watched as the Reagan administration threw its weight behind two other Gemayels, Pierre's uncle, Bashir, and father, Amin, in a radical project to re-make Lebanon as a bastion of pro-Western liberalism, aligned with Israel and free from Syrian domination and Iranian influence. That effort failed: Bashir wound up dead; Amin went into temporary exile; U.S. credibility evaporated and Americans remaining in Beirut became kidnap targets; and Israel got mired in an 18-year military occupation. By contrast, Syrian and Iranian influence in Lebanon swelled...
...Early-'80s Lebanon ought to have served as a cautionary tale heading off the U.S.'s more recent adventure in Iraq. In 1982, the U.S. backed an Israeli plan to invade Lebanon and destroy the Palestine Liberation Organization, kick out Syrian troops and install a pro-Western, Israel-friendly government led by Lebanese Maronite Christian leader Bashir Gemayel. Israel drove out the PLO, only to start negotiating with Yasser Arafat after a Palestinian uprising in the West Bank and Gaza trip a few years later. Suspected Syrian agents assassinated Bashir Gemayel days before his presidential inauguration. His supporters retaliated...
...actually happening, Turkey has responded pragmatically: it is by far the largest source of investment in Iraqi Kurdistan and has cultivated close relations with its leaders. As Turkey's more sophisticated strategic thinkers understand, Turkey and an independent Kurdistan have a lot in common. Both are secular, pro-Western, democratic and non-Arab. Not only will Kurdistan depend on Turkey economically, but it can serve as a useful buffer to an Iran-dominated Islamic Iraq...