Worldwide Java Jag: 2006-07-16

Thursday, July 20, 2006

FARCE or FARSI IN BEIRUT

The architect of record for the destruction of Lebanon has just been announced and it is …Fouad Siniora, who coincidentally happens to be the Lebanese prime minister! In an interview as reported in the New York Times, Mr. Siniora declared that he is all for returning the two kidnapped Israeli soldiers, but only after the issue of “the Shebaa Farms, Lebanese detainees in Israeli jails and the return to the 1949 armistice is negotiated.” It could have been worse. Mr. Siniora might have asked for the return of the entire Phoenician amphora in the Tel-Aviv natural history museum.
This stonewalling, this farce of delay and Iranian/Hezbollah/Hamas rejection of reality goes beyond defiance, it goes to national suicide and makes the Lebanese prime minister martyr in chief. First, just mentioning Shebaa Farms shows that he is a total puppet of Hezbollah. Of all the settled issues, this one is case-closed. The U.N., not known for definitive action, long ago said it was Syrian territory. Hiding behind this scrim of land as a just Lebanese cause is a callous act of betrayal to the citizens he is supposed to protect. His concern for the detainees is absurd; he never mentioned them before. His mention of 1949 agreements is like the French Prime Minister Paul Reynaud calling for a return to the 1918 Versailles treaty after German panzer divisions breached the Maginot line on their way to Paris.
And now he wants compensation. He clearly doesn’t give a Lebanese pound about the women and children being used as human shields by the forward armies of Hezbollah. He clearly doesn’t care about the physical destruction or his country. These red herrings pretending to be a foreign policy are almost too good to be true. The Israelis really don’t have to answer them and it looks like they won’t. Nor does anyone else seem to think they need an answer. He has not had a single response from any world leader.
The Iranians and Iraqis who have decided that everything is a Zionist plot and the “Jews and sons of Jews” are behind all the mayhem in Iraq might want to do a DNA blood sample on Mr. Siniora. The Mossad couldn’t have planted a more cooperative leader in Lebanon, a leader sure to give the Israeli air force the political cover and air time needed. Even Tony Blair can’t see the logic of a cease-fire with Hezbollah’s missiles in place and the IDF soldiers in captivity.
So how will it end? There is an outside chance of a coup in Lebanon. It is entirely possible that a Hariri son or an Aoun will pick up the energy of the Cedar Revolution and run with it. He may be given covert support from the Israelis and the U.S. or, believe it or not, the French. There are those in Lebanon who have a vested interest in seeing a modern, free state established on the ashes of the current theocracy. It is possible that all this bombing and degrading of Hezbollah is a kind of Bay of Pigs except that the invasion force is already ashore in the form of the Phalangists and their allies. Who would object to a change of regime from the Mullah-stringed puppet Mr. Siniora has revealed himself to be?
Clearly, of course, the Shiites, but by the time this is nearly over they may be so discredited by their suicidal actions that even the Lebanese in the south will want a restoration of law and order sans the beards and turbans.
Of course this could all turn out very badly and a fanatical Nasrallah, like Hitler in his bunker, could order his troops to topple the current government at all costs. This of course would prove a true civil war, but one that Nasrallah might find himself fighting on two fronts. For sure the Christian rationalists would receive support from the Israelis, and they would also be supported by the extensive Russian mafia who have exported capital to Beirut and have extensive business interests there. Don’t discount Egyptian and Jordanian help here; the last thing they need is another exporter of Islamic fundamentalism in the neighborhood.
Meanwhile we can expect only the bizarre from our man in Beirut. Who knows what he will demand tomorrow? Let’s just hope it doesn’t involve old pottery.