via The National Interest
Expressions of angst over Syria have entailed several themes, one of which concerns possible “spread” of the Syrian civil war into nearby states. Lebanon, for reasons of physical and ethnic geography, is most often mentioned as a locale of such spreading. But at [...]]]>
via The National Interest
Expressions of angst over Syria have entailed several themes, one of which concerns possible “spread” of the Syrian civil war into nearby states. Lebanon, for reasons of physical and ethnic geography, is most often mentioned as a locale of such spreading. But at least as useful as speculation about what the Syrian civil war may do to Lebanon is to reflect on how current events in Syria are echoing an earlier civil war in Lebanon. We have been through much of this before—thirty years ago, when Ronald Reagan was president.
By the early 1980s Lebanon had been suffering several years of combat among sectarian militias, reflecting disagreement over the fairness of old power-sharing agreements among the confessional communities. The biggest stirring of this already turbulent pot came in 1982 when Israel invaded Lebanon. The principal Israeli targets—declared targets, at least—were fighters of the Palestinian Liberation Organization who had been in Lebanon ever since being kicked out of Jordan a decade earlier, after losing the Black September confrontation with King Hussein. A small multinational force of U.S., French, and Italian troops entered Lebanon in August 1982 and supervised the extraction of the PLO to Tunisia before itself withdrawing to ships in the Mediterranean.
Israeli objectives were not limited just to booting the PLO out of Lebanon, however, and Israeli forces remained enmeshed in the sectarian fighting, besieging Beirut. Menachem Begin had ideas about trying to maintain a client to the north in the form of the pro-Israeli Christian government of Bachir Gemayel, who became president about when the PLO was leaving. Three weeks later Gemayel was assassinated, triggering the most horrid blood-letting of the Lebanese war. At least several hundred—and by some outside estimates perhaps something closer to 2,000—Palestinian civilians were slaughtered in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. The massacre was carried out by the Christian Phalangist militia, which was allied to and supplied by the Israelis. Israeli forces, whether wittingly or not, facilitated the massacre by maintaining a cordon around the area of the camps, and fired illuminating flares that enabled the Phalangists to continue their work by night.
The massacre stimulated the Reagan administration to organize a new multinational force that eventually included 1,800 U.S. marines as well as French and Italian troops. The force initially had some success in acting as a buffer between contending elements. But the intervention later became a textbook example of the near-inevitability of getting drawn into ever costlier commitments and endeavors in any situation as messy as Lebanon at that time. U.S. military engagement included not only the marines on the ground but also combat between carrier-based U.S. aircraft and Syrian forces (which had originally entered Lebanon as part of an Arab League peacekeeping force). At one point even the 16-inch guns of the battleship New Jersey were brought into action.
Those striking back at the increasingly resented foreign forces used methods against which jet fighters and battleships are of little use. In April 1983 a truck bomb was detonated at the U.S. embassy in Beirut, killing 63 persons. Six months later, another truck bomb was used against barracks housing U.S. troops (along with an identical and simultaneous attack against French troops). 241 U.S. servicemen were killed in that bombing—the deadliest terrorist attack against U.S. citizens until 9/11. Congressional pressure on the administration to withdraw from Lebanon increased. The last U.S. forces left in February 1984. The Lebanese civil war continued for several more years until sheer exhaustion, and a new political accord brokered by Saudi Arabia and Syria, brought it to an unsatisfying end.
Some parallels between that experience and the current situation regarding Syria are obvious. There is the overall complexity of the conflict and the presence of bad guys all around. There also is Israel taking advantage of a neighboring state’s civil war to pursue its own objectives, whether those are to smash a Palestinian force or to intercept long-established Hezbollah supply lines, regardless of how much its actions stoke and escalate the war. And if much of the discourse in Washington about Syria since the (presumed) Israeli attacks there over the past few days are any indication, there again is the pattern of Israeli actions increasing the chance of the United States getting sucked into the mess.Let us hope that those eager to get into the mess will reflect more than the statesmen of 1982 did about how this all will end. Moreover, those who talk about damage to U.S. prestige or credibility also ought to think about that aspect of the experience in Lebanon.
Let us hope that those eager to get into the mess will reflect more than the statesmen of 1982 did about how this all will end. Moreover, those who talk about damage to U.S. prestige or credibility also ought to think about that aspect of the experience in Lebanon. Withdrawing the U.S. troops in 1984—although it was the least bad thing the Reagan administration could have done at the time—was a U.S. defeat by Hezbollah. There is no way to sugar-coat that conclusion. It was just the sort of caving in to bad guys that we so often hear that we need to avoid. And it could have been avoided in Lebanon if the United States had not gotten involved in the mess in the first place, or at least if Israel had not—in its futile pursuit of absolute security for itself regardless of the insecurity it causes for everyone else—made the mess worse.
Photo: A view of the US Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, after a terrorist bombing that killed 63 people on April 18, 1983 (Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons/US Army)
]]>The run-up to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s recent visit to Lebanon called forth a barrage of comment from neoconservative circles. Unlike the savvy campaign for war in Iraq, [...]]]>
The run-up to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s recent visit to Lebanon called forth a barrage of comment from neoconservative circles. Unlike the savvy campaign for war in Iraq, however, they now tend to make straightforward claims that are self-evidently at odds with reality.
In other words, they’re not even telling very good lies any more.
A case in point was Iraq War propagandist Judith Miller’s Fox News article, whose central complaint seems to be that Ahmadinejad’s trip came at the behest of a single party, the Shia party/militia Hezbollah, rather than in response to an official invitation from the Lebanese government; “Who Invited You?” her headline indignantly blared.
Two problems undermined this approach. The first was that then-Foreign Minister Fawzi Salloukh quite publicly relayed just such an invitation to Ahmadinejad from his Lebanese counterpart, Michel Sleiman, in July 2008. The other was that Sleiman travelled to the Islamic Republic in November of that same year, making a reciprocal visit by Ahmadinejad what should have been a foregone conclusion.
That likelihood was placed in considerable doubt by the U.S. government’s having presumed the right to draw up Lebanon’s diplomatic schedule. While Miller rightly reported that Washington viewed the visit as “provocative,” she neglected to mention that heavy American pressure was applied on Beirut to cancel the visit. The U.S. demand was made in the name of Lebanese sovereignty (yes, really), which is rather ironic coming from a country that has supplied the tools for Israel’s occupation and violation of Lebanese territory, airspace and maritime boundaries for decades.
Undaunted by the untruths at the core of her position, Miller proceeds to expand on it. She asserts that other than the Iran’s close allies, Hezbollah, “Lebanon’s other political leaders … undoubtedly don’t share the love” for Ahmadinejad. Another falsehood: by any genuinely democratic standard, Lebanon’s most important political leaders do share that love. The parties that represent Lebanon’s largest sectarian community – its Shia population — are Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah’s Hezbollah and Speaker Nabih Berri’s AMAL, both of which enthusiastically welcomed Ahmadinejad. In addition, the Christian politician with the strongest bloc in Parliament, former Army Commander Michel Aoun, also supported the visit. Together, these parties and their allies received well over 50 percent of the vote in the last parliamentary elections.
Next we are treated to a brazen description of Ahmadinejad as “the man whose country is indirectly responsible for having killed [current Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s] father, former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.” Until the recent thaw between the top suspect — Syria — and the Hariri family’s benefactors in the Saudi royal family, no serious analyst even mentioned Hezbollah as a possible participant in the 2005 assassination. Now, in the absence of charges or hard public evidence, we are to presume Hezbollah’s guilt – and, by association, Iran’s – as established fact.
We are then told that the Hariri killing “sparked massive protests throughout Lebanon. This so-called ‘Cedar Revolution’ succeeded in forcing Syria, Iran’s neighbor and main Sunni Muslim ally, to withdraw the 14,000 ‘peace-keeping’ forces it had been keeping in Lebanon since the end of that country’s bloody civil war in 1990.” A few more problems. There were huge demonstrations (both for and against Syria), but all of the protests of any notable size took place in Beirut. Also, the term “Cedar Revolution” was coined by someone at the U.S. State Department. Would someone please tell American journalists to stop using it? In addition, unless someone has radically altered the map of the region (again), Syria and Iran do not share a border — they are neighbors in the same way that Iran and Lebanon are. And one more thing: Syria sent about 25,000 troops into Lebanon in 1976 — not 1990 – at the request of the latter’s president and with an Arab League mandate to foster stability amid the raging civil war.
Next, Hariri the younger is dismissed as “turning out to be anything but his father’s son.” In support, Miller trots out an Israeli journalist, Smadar Perry, to belittle Saad for having met with “Nasrallah (his father’s executioner)” and the “mastermind,” Syrian President Bashar Assad. Neither the American nor the Israeli, apparently, knows anything about the late Rafik Hariri, who made a career out of seeking and reaching accommodations with and among all the powerbrokers – both foreign and domestic, including, for years, the Syrians – in Lebanon’s cramped and chaotic political arena.
At this point we are apprised of the role of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL), which is supposed to look into the assassination. It is described, however, as a “UN panel,” which it is not: instead, the STL is a hybrid court whose judges will include Lebanese jurists and whose legality under the UN Charter is highly debatable owing to several factors — not least its having been created without the acquiescence of Lebanon’s Parliament.
Then another unabashedly pro-Israeli source — a report from the AIPAC-formed Washington Institute for Near East Policy — is put forth to assert that Ahmadinejad’s trip is intended to apply pressure on Saad Hariri “and his Lebanese and Western allies” to cancel Lebanon’s support for the court, “which Lebanon has been financing.” Actually, Lebanon is responsible for just 49% of the bill – and not a few Lebanese question the value of the investment because the court is widely viewed as a political tool of the pro-Western camp.
Next we are treated to a quote attributed to Nasrallah by yet another rabidly pro-Israeli actor, MEMRI, which tries to smear the cleric by tying him to a favorite American bogeyman, the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Not very artful, and even less relevant given that the date of its alleged provenance was more than two decades ago.
Then Miller hauls out a fellow neoconservative journalist, Lee Smith, who is used to a) make the point that Hezbollah’s real targets are Israeli and Arab public opinion; b) dredge up the familiar lie that Ahmadinejad has threatened to ‘wipe Israel off the map’; and c) reduce Nasrallah (leader of Hezbollah since 1992) to a “creation” of Ahmadinejad.
Finally, near the end of this avalanche of error, another point from Lee Smith is then applied which almost (however inadvertently) recovers the whole article: “By continuing to fight to liberate Jerusalem,” he is quoted as telling us, Tehran has “picked up the banner of Arab nationalism [sic] that the Sunni Arab regimes had tossed by the wayside. Here was another reason for the Arab masses to despise their cruel and now obviously cowardly rulers – and admire a Shia and Persian power they might otherwise fear and detest.” Some of those Arab regimes never took up the banner of Arab nationalism in the first place, and Iran’s emphasis is on Islamic solidarity, but the point is the same – by all but the most warped definitions of international law, at least half of Jerusalem is an occupied city, a fact which plenty of Arabs and other Muslims regard as unacceptable.
Here, then, is the real reason why America and Israel fret over the likes of Ahmadinejad: their policy has always been to divide and control (Arab vs. Persian, Sunni vs. Shia, oil producer vs. consumer, monarchist vs. republican, etc.) and anyone who even speaks about uniting these elements – regardless of how unsuccessful he is likely to be – threatens to expose the glaring weakness at the heart of their position.
Marc J. Sirois is an independent analyst based in Beirut, where he was managing editor of The Daily Star newspaper from 2000-2003 and 2006-2009.
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