What Happens in Lebanon Doesn't Stay in Lebanon

15.05.2008

No one really cares about Lebanon. And nobody really knows about Lebanon. I've been there myself and sat at the feet of my friend Fouad Ajami. If you can't learn about Lebanon from him you can't learn it from anyone.

I posted about Lebanon the other day and about how the cease-fire in the summer of 2006 opened the way for the calamity now unfolding -- almost completely unfolded already -- in the country.

A more detailed and, frankly, sharper analysis than mine was published in the Wall Street Journal earlier this week. It is by Bret Stephens, who is a master of prose even when he writes about tragedy, as the Lebanon horror certainly is.

To all you reflexive peace processors: there are things worse than cease fires, and those are cease fires in which one party has no intention of meeting its terms. That's what occurred two years ago. I must say that I warned about this, and so did Bret. But not many others.

Posted: Thursday, May 15, 2008 3:58 PM with 5 comment(s)

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liberal reformer said:

Negotiation is good if it produces results. Cease fires are good, too, if they lead to peace. But too often, a peace process, just for the sake of a process, has been instituted in the Middle East, only to lead nowhere, at best, or backward, at worst. All is not amenable to conflict resolution. CC to Condi.

May 15, 2008 5:06 PM

Gavriel Meir-Levi said:

It's so sad... a small country with truly democratic ambitions being thrown under the bus by the Bush administration so that Iran and Syria will help the US stabilize Iraq in time for the General Election.

Manipulation of our own democratic process is destroying the Lebanon's fledgling democracy.

May 16, 2008 12:26 PM

roidubouloi said:

Whether or not the cease-fire in 2006 was a good idea or a bad idea or a doomed idea, it is not the case that it was imposed on Israel by the US. Having re-invaded Lebanon with no coherent strategic or even tactical plan, Israel was by the end as in need of a cease-fire as Hezbollah. Israel was taking unacceptable casualties for no discernible gain. It got the best deal it could in exchange for withdrawing.

The problem, therefore, was not the ceasefire but the lack of a coherent battle plan -- as well as a lack of training for the type of battle being fought. In this sense, the 2006 Lebanon engagement was an echo of the US invasion of Iraq. The difference is that the US, with its size and wealth, can sustain much larger losses than Israel and for a much longer time. Israel, if it makes a mistake, must liquidate it quickly and write it off. The US can just continue to blunder, as it has and continues so to do.

May 18, 2008 12:38 AM

chrisnatale said:

the cease fire was garbage on both sides.

i don't see israel/us defense contractors helping to clean up their unexploded cluster bombs still waiting in lebanon by the thousands to snap kids legs off and blind them with shrapnel and blast.

May 19, 2008 10:31 AM

ericad said:

If "we" had REALLY wanted to "bring democracy to a middle East country", Syria was the country we should've hit. Getting them out of Lebanon would've allowed the revival of that country and pretty quick establishment of a Democratic government as well as really helped with the Israel-Palestine problem. Damn that they don't have oil or that our government doesn't have coherent strategies.

May 19, 2008 3:36 PM