And American MSM has never, ever had the intellectual capacity to understand how easy it is for a Police State to drum up a crowd: "This was not a Lebanese showing, and many of those who actually were Lebanese were not there because they support Syria. We know that at least three Palestinian camps were present. And there are 700,000 Syrian workers inside Lebanon, many of whom are not even supposed to be there. They were urged by Syria to attend so it looks like many Lebanese are protesting. Plus Syria bused in their own citizens from Syria through the border into Lebanon to join the rally." http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=43213
It ain't over yet!! http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,150333,00.html March 14th protest: Monday's protest easily topped a pro-government rally of hundreds of thousands of people last week by the Shiite Muslim militant group Lebanese Hezbollah. That show of strength forced the opposition to try to regain its momentum.
And they didn't have to truck in Syrain workers, Palestinians and government workers to fake a big turnout.
Impressive, Bill. The Million Lebanese March Thanking Pres. Bush, and it looks like Condi has a date lined up if she ever goes to Beirut:
Haha...Lebanon has 4 million people. Have you ever actually been to Beirut? No way could that many people fit into the main square. As for Hezbollah losing it's power. I think the exact opposite will happen. Shiites are about 40% of the population of Lebanon, by far the largest percentage, so the result will undoubtably be a government where Hezballah either controls or plays an extremely important role in any decision making process. So the group, instead of being a Syrian proxy...becomes it's own true independent force, not something I find exciting...another extremely religious Shi'ite anti-American state (with Iraq most certainly becoming one in the near future...) As for Hariri...I have a lot of Lebanese Christian friends, here and in Lebanon. They said the guy didn't revitalize the country, he just poured a lot of concrete. They thought what he had down wasn't structural or fundamental change to improve Lebanon, but instead just ephemeral...make Beirut look nice, and the rest of the country was forgotten. I find it fascinating that man...popular, but hardly loved by all has become such a martyr. I also wonder who assasinated him. The Syrians would have to have been insane to do it. Finally, once the Syrians pull out their troops, there will be two countries left with illegal occupations. Israel in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. And of course Turkey in Cyprus, illegally occupying and colonizing the northern third of the country. The impotence of the EU is shown by the fact that Cyprus, an EU member, is occupied, and they aren't even willing to lift a finger at Turkey. I find that quite amusing. As for Lebanese women, probably the most beautiful women in the world. They are lovely.
How is the Israeli occupation "illegeal"? Didn't Isreal win those lands during some war or another? Sachin
It's illegal under international law....you do accept international law don't you? Or do we just scoff it aside when we find it unpleasant....or it contradicts what we want.
OK, first of all, you can change your tone. You want to be all sarcastic and snotty and "OH YEAH???" then you can please get your ass back to the PolForum where that level of discourse is considered civilized. If you have something in the way of civilized discussion to add, do so. Excessive attitude will result in you being removed. Now that the unpleasantness is out of the way, let me ask: Exactly which "International Law" are you referring to here? Israel was established by the United Nations. Since then, they have been attacked by their neighbors a number of times and the cease fire lines are not the same as the original boundaries of Israel. In the absence of a formal treaty between the belligerants, the respective "nations" are still in place. So I ask: please cite for me which "International Law" Israel is in violation of.
That's a non-answer. How is the occupation (conquest?) of the West Bank and Gaza Strip illegal? Correct me if I'm wrong, but these is the way those two parcels of land became Israeli: 1. Several neighbors attacked Israel ii. Israel fought back and repulsed the invaders and took pieces of their territory. c. A cease fire was negotiated and Israel has since kept those lands. As for your question: Interational law is a vague thing and best defined by treaties such as the Law of the Sea, International Postal Union, etc. Sachin
(The Gaza strip is in the process of being handed over, and you should have added the Golan Heights) You should also add that Israel has repeatedly expressed a willingness to negotiate for the return of virtually anything and everything if and when their neighbors accept their right to exist. A right which, because of UN Mandate, is as firmly entrenched in "International Law" as any treaty or nation on Earth. Egypt, for example, exchanged Ambassadors, signed a peace treaty, picked up an enormous bribe from the US taxpayer and got the entire Sinai Peninsula back. As for "International Law" I am very well aware that it is much more concept than reality except for specific agreements, which is why I asked for a citation as to which one Israel has violated. I didn't really expect and naswer, because there isn't one, There are indeed UN resolutions - if that's what he's referring to, whcih I doubt - asking for withdrawal, but NONE of them ask for unilateral pullout. EVery single one requires Israels' neighbors to at least pretend that Israel has to be left alone and/or a genuine attempt to curtail terror attacks is made. It is the intransigence of Israel's neighbors that has prevented ME peace and will continue to do so. None of those countries is about to give up the Zionist whipping boy they somehow use to explain why their people live in a poverty-riddled police state.
So then you're agreeing that Syria should pull out of Lebanon since they are violating UN sanctions by occupying them. Or does the UN not count as international law?
damn it. I wrote a massive response....took me an hour to write to respond to the criticisms, and I lost it. argh. I don't have the time to respond right now, after class I may be able to answer. But let me first respond to one or two comments quickly right now. In regards to Syria, the short response is yes. The Taif accords of '89 and the UN 1559 resolution or whatever the number is, ask for the removal of Syrian troops. What I find fascinating about Syrian troops though is the fact that they were actually asked to come to Lebanon in '76 with the approval of the US with the goal of supporting the Maronite Christians. Their position was later reversed into opposing Israel, which invaded Lebanon fully in '82, with the hope of decimating the PLO. What is important to ask though is what are the repurcussions here. Are we willing to accept another Shi'a dominated state (as we have in Iraq), which will look to Iran for guidance? I don't know if Hezbollah as political party is the most appetizing reality. I will get to resolution 242, 4th ammendment of Geneva, and what not in regards to Israel. No, they do not call for unilateral pull out, but they are vague and open for interpretation.
I don't really know what to make of this. So much misinformation comes out of the ME that it's hard to judge. I'm just passing it along FWIW: A Coup d' Etat took place in Damascus late last night. Intelligence reports coming from within the Syrian Military Command indicate the following: A rebellion split The Syrian Army in two factions . Since yesterday , Damascus is under the de facto control of the Syrian Army, under the command of Syrian Interior Minister Ghazi Kanaan, and supported by Syrian Intelligence General Rustom Ghazaleh, Syrian military General Ali Madi, and Firas Tlass son of former Minister of Defence, Mustafa Tlass. The group rebelled against the decision of President Bashar el Assad to withdraw from Lebanon and seized the Damascus military yesterday. http://www.free-lebanon.com/
BigSoccer is broken, and it sucks. Huss is lucky we're so obsessed that we soldier on anyway. Teaf is a relic from 1979. It's absolutely comical to see pencil-neck Assad proclaiming that he's decided to comply with an agreement he's been ignoring for 25 years. SOrt of like France announcing that they've decided to implement Versailles. Be that as it may, Lebanon was always the poster boy for sectarian cooperation. They divided the government among the Maronites, the Shiites and the Druze for decades, and it worked. Beirut was widely touted as the coolest place on Earth. Without going into nine pages of details, basically the Palestinians upset the apple cart. They took over southern Lebanon, pushing out the Maronites. The Maronites fought back, supported by Israel. The Shiites couldn't side with Israel, but seemed more interested in killing apostate Druze. Israel eventually invaded to stop cross-border attacks. Everybody was killling everybody else. The international community tried to stop it and ust got themselves shot up with no effect. Syria came in and everybody was so thankful that the killing had stopped that they didn't care. And while it's certainly true that Syria stopped the civil war it's also true that they took over every aspect of Lebanese society, installing their own criminal thugs to make money running guns, selling drugs, whatever was available. Syria has no oil and their economy is basically non-existent. What they can steal from Lebanon (like $45 Billion is international reconstruction money) keeps Assad in power. Our main goal here is toppling Assad. We can deal with whatever comes next. The Shiites in Iraq seem to be steering a course away from Iran. Furthermore, I don't think the Mullahs, who are universally loathed in Iran, are going to be around for long. As for Hezbollah, they're going to have to disarm, like all the other groups were forced to do. When that happens, if they can win elections and gain political power and still choose to be buttheads, fine. We'll deal with it when it happens. In the meantime, Assad will be history. Addition by subtraction. Because they were intended to be.
A quick response, as I am in class right now. In my original post, I delved into the history of Lebanon in a little more detail, and also in regards to French interests in the levant. I disagree that seeing a demilitarized Hezbollah is something that we can just "deal" with. I also disagree that simply toppling Assad is going to solve any problems...except in an ephemeral fashion...stabilizing the region for a period of time, until it blows up again in the future. As for the mullahs in Iran...well that is a whole other post...as that revolution there...is extremely interesting. I was just thinking the other day how much we would kill for a Mossadegh in Iran right now...i guess eisenhower and co. shouldn't have listened to Churchill as ardently as they did. I think the 50's is the probably the period of history that we should try to look back upon. That was the period of time when the US was most active, or rather, the period when the US began being agressive in imposing her will upon other nations. Arbenz in '54, setting up the election in Italy a little earlier to insure it didn't go left, Diem in Vietnam, etc. We should be careful, and tread lightly. In Iran...there are indigenous reform movements, that I think will naturally revoke the extremism...Persian culture is thousands of years old...and I would rather have that, then seeing our boys being sent into Iran, only hardening the grasp of Tehran over the country. And in regards to Beirut being the "coolest". One of the things that Harriri did...in pouring all that concrete was make Beirut into the place where all the rich arabs and israelis could go and cool off....and sleep with hot blondes, etc. His reforms of the country...or rather further indebting the country...public debt, just public debt is 200% of gdp. Kind of absurd. I'm curious to see if there will be mass immigration back to lebanon on the part of the christians lebanese who fled. Very prominent minorities...all over this hemisphere...Menem in argentina, many others. And hence my objection, sort of tying to my original post, about occupations. I think there is discontinuity if you can say the Syrian occupation, which was blessed origianlly not only by the US, but also by the Arab league, etc is different than the Israeli occupation, or the Turkish occupation (which for whatever reason caused no remark...while the Israel remark caused great consternation amongst the advocates on this board).
I'm not big on the term "Levant" but I won't quibble. As for the French, their sordid colonial history in the Lebanon/ Syria/Iraq axis goes back as far as the Crusades and as recently as 1921. 1) Well we HAVE to deal with it, assuming that they eventualy lay down. Nasrullah announced today that they won't, but that's just his opening bid. But a legitimate political party, representing a substantial percentage of the population, HAS to be reckoned with. And notice that, again today, a Hezbollah official "welcomed" Bush's remarks on Hezbollah as a "positive step". In other words, we're dealing already. 2) Toppling Assad and the Baathist thugs (there's no other apt description) may allow a popularly elected government. That's enough in and of itself, but aside from that it kills the outside support for the Iraqi throat-slashers and cements that government. (It also will give us access to Saddam's BioChem stuff, which willl shut everybody up forever and put Bush on Mt Rushmore) Well, you could put it that way. Or you could say that the 50's was when America was forced to choose between letting the Soviet Union topple government after government around the world and supporting non-communist nationalist elements. It wasn't ever a role we chose. It was a role that was thrust upon us. We will never send troops into Iran. Write it down. We won't have to. The Iranian/Persian culture is not conducive to the kind of repressive theocratic regime that's holding the country now. They're a well-educated, worldly and almost cosmopolitan country. They have always prided themsleves on their separate and distinct history as opposed to the Arabs. The mullahs are universally hated, and they're going down. But here's the thing: this whole process was delayed a few years because the American left convinced the nutjobs in Iran and elsewhere that Bush was going away and so they had nothing to fear. They were shocked when you and CNN turned out to be wrong about that. So now the pressure is on, the people know that now is the time, and the mullahs get up every morning and worry about that Cowboy Bush and the 150,000 man best-army-in-the-world which is conveniently parked on their border. Beirut was also a key banking center, a key commercial clearinghouse and the Arab world's window to Western business back before the civil war. Hariri did wonders, considering he had the Syrians stealing the place blind while he was desperately trying to rebuild a shattered country. I know the left has this mission now for some inexplicable reason, to try and downgrade Hariri. Makes them feel better about hating George Bush somehow I'm sure. I doubt it. Well you can't equate all of those "occupations" as being the same exact thing. Each is vastly different. Germany "occupied" Poland in 1939. The US "occupied" Japan in 1945. Most fair minded people would admit to very few similarities. The fact that Syria had broad international approval for their suppression of the Lebanese civil war in 1976 has nothing whatever to do with what the hell they're still doing there stealing the place blind, running criminal operations, locking up and torturing indigenous opponents and murdering popular politicians in the streets almost 30 years later. I'm not sure what you mean by the "Turkish occupation" unless you're referring to the Ottoman Empire. The Jannissaries left a long long time ago. As for Israel, they "occupy" none of Lebanon. They did for a while and voluntarily left, which Hezbollah claimed as a great victory and mahams, PFLP, Al Fatah and the rest all took as a sign that Israel could be brought to it's knees by indicriminate slaughter of innocent people, but that's a whole nother case. The Syrians have had their steel-toed jackboot on Lebanon for too long now. However they got there originally is immaterial. It's time to go, and the whole world accepts it. Can't get much more "Multilateral" than that.