Wednesday, February 7, 2007
Another fascinating report from Michael J. Totten in Lebanon, this time talking politics with Eli Khoury, one of the "elite" of the March 14 Movement: On the Top Floor of Lebanon’s Civil Society
...“Before the 1970s our democracy was at least as good as in Italy or Greece,†Eli said. “[Egyptian President Gamal Abdel] Nasser and the Arab-Israeli war ruined us. Without Nasser, the PLO, and Assad we would be like Italy is right now, or at least like Greece. Our circumstances are bigger than the country. And our biggest problem right now are the ‘realists’ in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Israel.â€
Most Lebanese think the American and Israeli “realists†who want to negotiate with the Syrians are painfully naïve at best, and downright sinister at worst. There’s an old saying about the Damascus regime in Beirut: Assad starts the fire, sells the water, and never delivers. And Lebanese will never forget that Secretary of State James Baker green-lighted Syrian domination of Lebanon for completely unneeded “help†in ousting Saddam Hussein from Kuwait...
Half of the Israeli "Realism' is State Department pushing as in Gaza Border Deal brokering.
James Baker and crew (Raymond Close, Weinberger et al) were into screwing Lebanon, er, ahem, favouring Syria way back in the 80s, well before the Gulf War, when they excused Syrian complicity with Arafat's PLO in the murderous rampage across Lebanon.