Is This the "Cedar Revolution" Bush and Sharon Wanted?

By DHinMI

A few months ago there was a bunch of excitement about how the Bush administration's policies toward the Middle East had led to the resignation of the pro-Syrian government in Lebanon.  At the time I anticipated that what was an understandable reaction to the assassination of former Lebanese PM Rafik Hariri would be appropriated by the Bush administration and the simplifiers in the American mass media as a "cedar revolution" along the lines of previous (and actual) Velvet Revolutions in Serbia, Georgia and most signficantly Ukraine.  David Brooks got all excited because the long-time political-military leader of Lebanon's Druze community, Walid Jumblatt, claimed the American invasion of Iraqi led to that country's January election, which he took as "the start of a new Arab world."  The folks over at Think Progress pointed out that Jumblatt was a strange source for conservatives to tout, since just a few months earlier he said "we are all happy when U.S. soldiers [in Iraq] are killed week in and week out" and that those killings aren't just legitimate, they're "obligatory." 

And Jumblatt was part of the opposition that the Bush administration portrayed as "the good guys."

Lebanese politics are a little more complicated than Texas politics, so one can understand how the Mayberry Machiavellians misread and misrepresented the "cedar revolution."  But it's hard to imagine the Israelis fell for the notion that Lebanon had just gone from a simple undemocratic nation occupied by a foreign army to a flourishing liberal democracy seeking a close alliance with the U.S.(and maybe even Israel).  In fact, Lebanon was already more democratic than the Bush people indicated, and it's likely to be far less pro-US or pro-Israel than what the Bushies wanted others to believe, and maybe even less than they had hoped.  And with what's happened in the last few days, Israel can't be too happy about the direction in which the "cedar revolution" appears headed.

The person to watch for clues to where Lebanon is headed is Jumblatt, especially in terms of his relationship with the Shiite group Hizbullah.  He and his constituency are critical to the success of the anti-Syrian opposition checking or supplanting the power of Hizbullah and the other forces allied with Syria.  He's been invited to speak before the European Parliament as the main representative of the Lebanese opposition.  But recently Jumblatt appears to be moving closer to the pro-Syrian side, in part to preserve his political base of power.  And it appears to have his opposition partners a little worried.

The heart of the matter is redrawing political boundaries.  Think of it, in American terms, as a dispute over reapportionment and redistricting.  Under the proposal favored by the opposition, Jumblatt would probably lose influence because of the size and composition of the voting districts.  Therefore it's not surprising that he's spent much of the last week making nice with the pro-Syrian side.  He met with Speaker of Parliament Nabih Berri, who is also leader of the Shiite Amal Movement.  [In 1987, when Hizbullah hijackers seized TWA flight 847 and demanded the release of 756 prisoners from Israeli custody, the Reagan administration pressured Israel to accede to the demand.  The coverage of the hijacking by the US television networks has been described by terrorism expert Bruce Hoffman as "doubtless the most glaring example of terrorism's ability to capture media attention and manipulate and exploit it in ways amenable to the terrorists' cause."  And according to Hoffman, the media strategy for the hijack, conceived by "graduates of media studies from American colleges," was implemented Berri's home in West Beirut.] 

Jumblatt also met last week with with Hizbullah's Secretary-General, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah.  Republican Congressman Darrel Issa--the goofball who started the Gray David recall, who's also Lebanese-American--was in Lebanon, and while there reiterated the administration's insistence on Lebanese compliance with UN Resolution 1559, which calls on the disarmament of Hizbullah (which operates a formidable army separate from the Lebanese military).  Even though Jumblatt met with Issa prior to meeting Nasrallah, he expressly rejected compliance with 1559 because "we might still need Hizbullah's arms in coordination with the National Army. Others, including some journalist, support Resolution 1559 - I don't."

Hizbullah's arms and the men who use them comprise quite a military.  Hizbullah is respected throughout the Arab world for pressuring Israel to withdraw from Southern Lebanon.  Even though they hold seats in parliament and operate impressive social welfare programs in Southern Lebanon, the US has long classified Hizbullah as a "foreign terrorist organization" ever since it killed over 200 marines in a suicide bombing at the barracks in Beirut.  And while Hizbullah's participation in the Lebanese government has dissuaded European nations, despite US pressures, from declaring it a terrorist organization, Hizbullah continues to denounce the US, as last week when a sheik aligned with Hizbullah suggested a bombing in a Christian neighborhood was the work of forces seeking to abet "U.S. colonization" of Lebanon.

And now they're taunting Israel:

The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah flew a spy drone over northern Israel on Monday, and the unmanned flight returned safely, the group said.

The flight was confirmed by the Lebanese government and the Israeli military.

Hezbollah said in a broadcast over its Al-Manar Television channel that "a Mirsad drone of the Islamic Resistance flew over settlements in the northern part of occupied Palestine and later returned safely."

The leader of the "cedar revolution" is negotiating with the main forces aligned with Syria, including militant opponents of the US.  Those forces have a powerful militia which a UN resolution demands be disbanded, but the "opposition" leader says the militia should remain intact until Israel withdraws from disputed territory on the Syria-Lebanon-Israel border.  And now the militia posses the ability to penetrate Israeli airspace with unmaned drone aircraft, and the Israelis apparently can't shoot it down.  And Syria, who many Mideast experts argued played a moderating influence on Hizbullah, is now on its way out of the country and cannot as easily restrain Hizbullah from provoking Israel or possibly even engaging in acts of terrorism beyond the Lebanese border. 

Do the Bushies really believe that Ukraine's Orange Revolution and Lebanon's supposed "cedar revolution" are all that alike?  And do you wonder if Israel is all that happy with developments on its northern border for which the Bush administration was so eager to take credit just a few weeks earlier?

Comments

[emptywheel]

I just keep thinking about Sharon, refusing Bush's guest house at the "ranch." He could have done it for any number of reasons--Bush cracking down on new settlements, a distaste for false populism, or growing annoyance with US fuckups. Or perhaps he didn't want to sleep in the same place Prince Abdullah did.

But it's a pretty nice snub...