During his recent trip to Beirut when he appeared to imply that Lebanese had better ‘vote right’ if they want to continue receiving generous American aid, was Vice President Joe Biden just being the gaffe machine we have come to know and love, or was he quite pointedly delivering a message on the part of the Obama Administration?
According to Kharroubi Habib of Algeria’s Le Quotidien d’Oran, the answer is undoubtedly the latter.
“Joe Biden may carry the burden of being an unrepentant gaff-maker, but under the circumstances, his intervention in Lebanon owes nothing to his blundering spirit. He has merely transmitted an injunction from an American administration that doesn’t want and will not accept a democratic ballot in an Arab country that fails to conform with the plans and projects if the United States.”
“The intrusion of the American Vice President into Lebanon’s political debate illuminates the U.S. political establishment’s variable geometry in regard to democracy. For them, democratic expression has limits in the Arab world.”
“The summons issued by Joe Biden to the Lebanese people foreshadows that their nation would be subject to the same global humiliation endured by the Palestinians after an election that handed a parliamentary majority to Hamas – classified by Washington in the same breath as the ‘Lebanese parties’ that the U.S. has ‘recommended” distancing ourselves from.'”
By Kharroubi Habib
Translated By Sandrine Ageorges
May 25, 2009
Algeria – Le Quotidien d’Oran – Home Page (French)
American Vice President Joe Biden just visited Lebanon, where he issued to his people what our colleague K. Selim justly qualified as a “summons to vote well” in legislative elections to be held in their country on June 7th. And “voting well,” according to Joe Biden, consists of blocking “parties hostile to peace” – based on America’s criteria.
The Lebanese to whom he has shown how to “vote well” will appreciate the limits of this advice from the American emissary, bearing in mind that he restrained himself from making the same intervention on the direction of Israel’s people, who also held elections won by the enemies of peace.
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