Pro-Western Win In Lebanon

It's hard to appreciate just how important this story will be. In a world where politics is polarized not around abortion and gay marriage but rather around secular/western versus religious/insular politics, it's heartening to see democracy working and the Party of God getting set back. It's not a victory for President Obama, it's a victory for the world as a whole, and the causes of peace and tolerance in particular. (Obama does not get a monopoly on those agenda items.)

On the other hand, Lebanon is vastly weaker in terms of military force than either Israel or Syria. In particular, Syria has been known to send in tanks when it doesn't like how Lebanon behaves. Whether the new regime in Syria follows this historical example remains to be seen. And the power of Hezbollah in the southern provinces of Lebanon will not be dislodged by the results of a single election.

Nevertheless, congratulations to the Lebanese and here's hoping for a peaceful, economically prosperous, and ultimately beneficial series of policy steps to re-integrate what could be one of the richest, most prosperous, and most democratic Arab nations.

Bad Guys Moving Ahead

Remember that strange war between Israel and Hezbollah last year? The one that was pretty clearly a proxy conflict between the U.S. and Iran? Well, Israel's goal was to stamp Hezbollah out of existence. It has obviously failed. Like the obnoxious weed that it is, Hezbollah simply dug in to its roots and sprouted elsewhere, and now it is pursuing overt military action against the government of Lebanon, taking funding, supplies, and logistical support from its sponsors in Tehran and Damascus. It would be nice if we could offer some better support to the moderate and pro-Western elements in Lebanon, but six years after beginning military operations against Iraq and seven years after Afghanistan, we are still over-extended and probably still gunshy after the disaster in 1982. It's frustrating to see the bad guys do stuff like this and get away with it.

The Essence Of Beruit

Remember a year ago when Israel invaded Lebanon? What the hell was that about? Lebanon used to be the Paris of the Middle East. Now, here's what you get in Beruit:


Syria continues to poke its fingers into Lebanon's government. Iran continues to not-so-covertly fund Hezbollah, whose power in the southern part of the country remains unclear. Israel can knock out any installation it wants but it can't secure the territory, so what's the point? Syria can't annex Lebanon, any more than Jordan could -- so it's kind of floating out there on its own, and no one really knows what to do with it or what kind of a future the country will have.

A guy from Toastmasters told a touching story once about his childhood in Beruit and his family fleeing their home on Christmas day because the Syrians were raiding the housing complexes for food. The old Lebanon had universities, nightclubs, good restaurants, lots of scenes like that photograph only with beautiful hotels instead of bombed-out shells dotting the skyline of Beruit. My guess is that there are still lots of people who want to see an open, democratic, liberalized society flourish in Lebanon. It looks like it would be a really interesting place to visit, with tons of history and lots of natural beauty.

Abdication

The President has found his war czar. Should When things don’t go very well as Iraq’s parliament retires for a two-month recess and eventually reconvenes for its rigorous schedule of meeting for two hours a day three days a week, and surprises the world by failing to achieve any kind of political unity in the country, General Lute will be looking at a new career as a scapegoat. So I presume he has negotiated his compensation for this service in advance. What bugs me is that this is the President’s own job – coordinating multiple fronts of military activity, economic developments, and variations in international political stability is the role that the President plays in foreign policy. Having people to help and advise him, and make policy on his behalf, is one thing; it’s something else to just punt all of these duties to an active-duty general and focus on the fun parts of the job.

Absolute Chaos

This morning, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki (who earlier warned America that he was "not your man in Iraq") bowed to pressure from the warlord Moktada al-Sadr, and ordered American troops to lift their checkpointed seige of Sadr City, a Shiite slum to the northeast of Baghdad. The seige had been imposed after an American solider of Iraqi descent, who had been visiting his Iraqi civilian wife, was kidnapped and a group known to be affiliated with al-Sadr announced that they were holding the soldier hostage.

Read all about it in the Washington Post and the New York Times. Niether Faux News nor CNN have not made the connection between the kidnapping of the soldier and the easing of the crackdown on Sadr City -- come to think of it, didn't that part of Iraq used to be called "Saddam City?" Andrew Sullivan thinks there are nuances here, but frankly, I can't see them. Yes, there is a need to defer to the civilian government of Iraq, but whatever happened to "no man left behind"?

Oh, and before I forget, we've uncovered substantial evidence that Hezbollah, backed by its sponsors Syria and Iran, is now trying to stage a coup to overthrow the moderate government of Lebanon. Thus we see the wages of a war interrupted by unthinking bureaucrats incapable of distinguishing right from wrong exercising their power to cluck disapprovingly -- which is what they will do when the coup happens. I used to think the United Nations was mostly harmless but this makes me wonder -- there's no massive conspiracy to subjugate the world to a unified government there, to be sure, but there's also no ability to discern reality, and that can be dangerous, too.

And what are we doing about all of this here in the states? Chuckling over John Kerry's gaffe, because it seems to have helped the Republicans' chances of maintaining control over Congress.

Bite Me, Ahmadinejad

It's easy for me to appreciate the daunting challenges faced by diplomats and world leaders. Trying to find some kind of common ground with guys like the President of Iran must be a huge challenge. He complained to the United Nations today that there was no outcry of human rights violations levied against Israel during its recent war with Hezbollah, claiming that there was "blanketed and unwarranted support" for Israel during that conflict.

Dude, I know good and well that you can get CNN in Tehran. I know that the BBC is available there, too. And I know good and damn well that you can watch Al-Jazeera all day long in Iran. And I know that there were lots of talking heads, lots of Palestinian, Syrian, and Iranian mouthpieces, proxies, PR flacks, and spinmeisters hitting the airwaves every damn day. I remember lots of images on TV of ruined Lebanese villages, piles of rubble where apartment buildings used to be and pictures of Lebanese people, rendered homeless, grieving over their lost loved ones. That there were also similar pictures coming from Israel only proves that 1) the Israelis took their lumps, too, and 2) Israel, unlike Hezbollah-controlled southern Lebanon, permits a free press.

So I don't want to hear about how the Western media and the people of the West uniformly gave blanket support to Israel. Because we didn't. A lot of us, myself included, had to go out of our way to remind others in the West that yes, there were good guys and bad guys in that war and that Hezbollah is not an organization of good guys.

To suggest that Westerners gave their uncritical and unflinching support to Israel is revisionism at its finest. To make that suggestion before the gathered heads of state of the entire world is revisionism writ upon the largest of all possible canvases. Would that we had actually done as Ahmadinejad suggests we did. Perhaps we would have been able to wipe those bastards off the planet entirely. And then we could credibly tell this dude that we mean it when we say we want his mullahs to stop enriching uranium.