Close to 1 million people turned up for a Hizballah rally in 2006
Could there be a more perfect image of the catastrophic self-inflicted rout suffered by U.S. Middle East policy under President George W. Bush? This week, the President will party with Israel’s leaders celebrating their country’s 60th anniversary — and champion a phony peace process whose explicity aim is to produce an agreement to go on the shelf — with Bush curiously choosing the moment to honor the legend of the mass infanticide and suicide of the Jewish Jihadists at Masada. Meanwhile, across the border in Lebanon, Hizballah are riding high on the tectonic shifts in the Middle East’s political substructure, making clear that the “new Middle East” memorably (if grotesquely) inaugurated by Condi Rice in Beirut in 2006 is nothing like that imagined or pursued by the Bush Administration. On the contrary, the Bush Administration has managed to weaken its friends and allies and empower its enemies to an almost unprecedented degree.
The collapse and humiliation of the U.S.-backed Lebanese government after it had foolishly threatened to curb Hizballah’s ability to fight Israel was simply the latest example of a failed U.S. policy of cajoling allies into confrontations with politically popular radical movements that the U.S. and its allies simply can’t win. And picking fights that you can’t win is not exactly adaptive behavior. Indeed, as I noted earlier this week, recovering alcoholics in America are taught the adage that repeating the same behavior and expecting different results is the very definition of insanity — but by measure of what we’ve seen in Gaza, Basra, Sadr City, that’s one lesson that appears to have eluded this particular administration. The Lebanese showdown was initiated by Washington’s closest allies threatening to close down Hizballah’s internal communication network, and it’s hard not to suspect that such a provocative move could only have been taken with Washington’s encouragement. And to put it unkindly, paper tigers should not play with matches.
The result was predictable, because in terms of popular support, organization, and arms in the field, the militias backing the U.S.-backed government are no match for Hizballah, which quickly seized control of Beirut, and also of other key locations. But Hizballah made abundantly clear that it had no intention of taking over the country, it was simply underlining its intention to maintain its capacity to fight Israel — and to resist any attempt to trim that capacity, regardless of whether such trimming is required by UN Security Council resolutions. That’s why it took control over key Druze-controlled towns in the Chouf — because they’re strategically valuable in any confrontation with the Israelis.
President Bush sounded like a man lost in his own fantasies when he vowed, in response, to “beef up” the Lebanese army to help it disarm Hizballah. The Lebanese Army, Bush appears not to have noticed, enjoys the trust of Hizballah, which is why the Shi’ite militia immediately handed over areas it captured to the Army. And the reason the Army enjoys Hizballah’s trust is its scrupulous neutrality in the civil conflict between the government and the Hizballah-led opposition (i.e. in the clash between the U.S.-Saudi backed bloc and the Syrian-Iranian backed bloc) — the Lebanese Army has no intention of disarming Hizballah. On the contrary, it appears willing to cooperate with the movement’s efforts to steel itself for a new battle with the Israelis.
Rami Khouri, the Daily Star editor at large whose analyses are essential reading, is optimistic over the potentials for a new Middle East political order revealed in the unfolding of events in Lebanon."
