One Lebanese Who Gets It

The New Republic has posted an extraordinary article by a journalist living in Beirut.

Lebanon a victim? What a joke!

Before the Israeli attack, Lebanon no longer existed, it was no more than a hologram. In Beirut, innocent citizens like me were forbidden access to certain areas of their own capital. But our police, our army, and our judges were also excluded. That was the case, for example, of Hezbollah's and the Syrians' command zone in the Haret Hreik quarter (in red on the satellite map). A square measuring a kilometer wide, a capital within the capital, permanently guarded by a Horla army, possessing its own institutions, its schools, its crèches, its tribunals, its radio, its television and, above all ... its government. A "government" that, alone decided, in the place of the figureheads of the Lebanese government--in which Hezbollah also had its ministers!--to attack a neighboring state, with which we had no substantial or grounded quarrel, and to plunge the United States into a bloody conflict. And if attacking a sovereign nation on its territory, assassinating eight of its soldiers, kidnapping two others and, simultaneously, launching missiles on nine of its towns does not constitute a casus belli, the latter juridical principle will seriously need revising.

Behe clearly sees that the people responsible for this war are the powerless and gutless members of Lebanon's government, who allowed Hizbullah to hijack the country. I am sure that many Lebanese think the same way but can not or are afraid to publicly say what Behe says.

But more than just this war being Lebanon's fault, it is the fault of the "international community". As they have done numerous times, they passed resolutions and then failed to enforce them. Had Resolution 1559 actually been implemented and Hizbullah disarmed, there would have been no war. Had the Taif accords been actually implemented, Hizbullah would never have acquired 15,000 rockets and missiles. But as always, the diplomats in Turtle Bay can will the ends but never the means of achieving those ends. And by that, they have made themselves worse than useless; they have become abettors and appeasers of the fascists of our age.