Arabs Will Be Free

21 Article 6. NYT Arabs Will Be Free Roger Cohen March 28, 2011 -- Three Middle Eastern countries have been conspicuous for their stability in the storm. They are Turkey, Lebanon and Israel. An odd mix, you might say, but they have in common that they are places where people vote. Democracy is a messy all-or-nothing business. That’s why I love it. You can no more be a little bit democratic than a little bit pregnant. Yes, citizens go to the polls in Turkey, Lebanon and Israel and no dictator gets 99.3 percent of the vote. They are lands of opportunity where money is being made and where facile generalizations, for all their popularity, miss the point. Turkey has not turned Islamist, Lebanon is not in the hands of Hezbollah, and Israel is still an open society. All three countries, of course, are also wracked by division and imperfection; but then two great merits of democracy are that it finesses division and does not aspire to perfection. Speaking of Hezbollah, remember all that alarm a couple of months back when a Hezbollah-backed businessman, Najib Mikati, emerged as prime minister? After that, Lebanon introduced the Libyan no-fly- zone resolution at the United Nations — a rare, if little noted, example of the United States and a Hezbollah-supported government in sync. Talk to Hezbollah: That’s obvious. It’s no terrorizing monolith. Mikati is struggling with the give-and-take of Lebanese politics. Life goes on in the freewheeling way that has long drawn repressed, frustrated Arabs to Beirut. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_030050