Andrew Lee Butters of Time magazine: he hearts the Bush Doctrine

I don't read Time and Newsweek, except forced to do so at the Dentist's office, although between People magazine and Time and Newsweek I prefer the former. I tell my students of you start reading the Economist magazine you won't be able to read Time or Newsweek. They are too insulting to one's intelligence and knowledge. And the quality of foreign coverage has deteriorated over the years and decades. I prefer articles from the 1950s and 1960s to what I now read sometimes. So I won't have seen this article by this fellow, Andrew Lee Butters, if I did not receive it in an email. The man is pissed: he believes that the Bush administration was doing a great job in steering US Middle East policy, and worries that Obama is not as effective in the Middle East as Bush. And then he gives the classic definition of both sides in Lebanon: " Should Lebanon be a Westward-looking business-oriented tourist playground, or a frontline bastion of resistance to Israel?" What amuse me about this definition is this: why don't they at least admit the obvious: that the biggest party (Hizbullah) in March 8 has a patron, and it is Iran. And the biggest party in March 14 (Hariri family movement) has a parton, and it is Saudi Arabia. So the attempt to make qualitatively different evaluations based on democracy between the two sides just does not work. Now Saudi Arabia stands for consmopolitanism, liberty, secularism, and reason? Give me a break. And then this fellow says this about the `Awn movement's showing in the parliamentary election: "the Christian ally it would have needed to form a government was soundly defeated in that community's polls." Somebody needs to tell this fellow the is wrong: that the `Awn movement received the most votes among Christians throughout Lebanon, and the Christian MPs who won in the lists of March 14 won by Sunni votes due to pre-election transfer of voters' registration to Christian areas to prop up Hariri Christian MPs. (thanks Amer)