On Wed, 10 Jul 2002, Carl Remick wrote:
> King Abdullah has my very deepest sympathy. The couple of times I've
> seen him in TV interviews, I have been much impressed by his good sense,
> intelligence, poise and articulateness. In every way he strikes me as
> the anti-Bush. It's a pity we have no one whatsoever of his caliber in
> U.S. politics.
Well, let's not go too far. He's more suave and intelligent than Bush, but that's not setting the bar high. And he's certainly between a rock and a hard place on Iraq no matter what course he chooses. But the indications are that underneath the patina, and the rhetoric that he's some kind of modernizer, Abdallah is in fact planning to be a very old fashioned kind of Arab leader. He seems to have taken as a given that the Palestinian majority in his country, if given their voice and a choice, would choose against him. He seems to have steadily dismantled the mildly democraticizing initatives introduced by his father. And so he seems instead to be placing his faith in increasing police surveillance, imprisoning the opposition, muzzling the media, shoring up his tribal base, and supporting and being supported by the US. That doesn't make him stand out among his neighbors as a bad guy. But neither does he stand out as a great one. And he certainly doesn't stand out among them for his willingness to stand up the US. In fact, his one claim to distinction so far has been that's he's gotten way farther than any other Arab country towards a free trade agreement with the US. But even that hasn't happened yet. And Iraq may be more trouble for him than for anyone other ruler in the region.
Here's a recent backgrounder from MERIP on the subject: http://www.merip.org/pins/pin98.html
Michael