the human province

Thanks to those who have sent messages wondering if I was all right and where I was. I took a trip up to the Chouf on Tuesday and spent the night in a village in the mountain. I visited some of the Druze shebab to see how things were and how they were feeling after their unexpected victory over Hezbollah in Barouk.

When I got back to Beirut, what I thought was just a long electricity cut turned out to be several days without power (that's getting fixed while I type, insh'allah). So I've been out of the loop, news and otherwise, and will need some time to wrap my head around things before posting any comments about the situation.

There's also the fact that during the last week, I've not really wanted to do much except sleep. As a result, I didn't get any work done and am now swamped with things that have been left undone up to now.

This seems to be shaping up to be a full-scale coup d'état by Hezbollah with the support of the army. It looks like they're going piece by piece. Future was first, now the PSP is being taken in the Chouf, and I imagine the Lebanese Forces in the Christian sectors will be next.

The rest of the Lebanese parties were no match for Hezbollah, but when you throw in the army, what can you expect? Hariri and Joumblatt seem to have agreed not to fight, probably to save the bloodshed that would not have stopped the coup in any case. So they've agreed to go quietly in exchange for there not being a battle to which Future and PSP partisans would have gone like lambs to the slaughter.

The army seems to have cut a deal with Hezbollah, but it's hard to say what they could have done in any case, since they're so much weaker than the Party of God. So the current government will most likely be forced to resign, Suleiman will be appointed as president, and someone pliable will be appointed to be Prime Minister. Things will be like before 2005, except that instead of taking marching orders from Damascus, the new government will answer to Harat Hreik.

Yesterday, I spent a good part of the day in Hamra, where SSNP thugs were still armed and around. They broke up a group of unarmed neighborhood residents (most of whom were with Future) by shooting in the air and shouting. The night before a 16-year-old boy had been killed while delivering a narguileh for the shop he worked for. When they finally had a hard time getting the group of the boy's friends, family and neighbors to go inside despite plenty of shooting, they left. Shortly afterward, the Army finally showed up. The SSNP gunmen were going around Hamra without any challenge from the Army.

Today, things seem to be much better in West Beirut (although I haven't been there today), but fighting has spread all over the country, with Hezbollah apparently shelling a Druze village and opposition Druze forces fighting the PSP in Aley. Clashes are also going on in in Shweifat.

Add this to the fighting in Tripoli, and the death toll is nearly 40 now. In the words of Yeats:

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Another thing that's been bothering me is the fact that Mostaqbal's media outlets were shut down. I won't pretend that part of me doesn't feel a little tinge of delight at the idea of the Mostaqbal thugs getting some comeuppance. But punishing neighborhood thugs who fancy themselves militiamen is one thing, while shutting down media outlets is another. During the 2006 war, Hezbollah was (rightfully, to my mind) outraged by Israel's targeting of their television station, al-Manar. So why is it acceptable to have shut down Future TV?

I'm watching Kalam an-Nass right now, while the head of Future TV is being interviewed. According to him, a Lebanese soldier, in uniform, told them that they had to open the gates or else they'd be killed by Hezbollah militiamen. This is, of course, disconcerting on several levels. First of all, this would mean that a member of the ostensibly neutral Lebanese Army would have helped Hezbollah shut down the media outlet of a competing political party. But regardless of whether or not a soldier helped Hezbollah shut the station down, the latter certainly did disconnect Future TV. This is scandalous, and Hezbollah should be ashamed of itself.

A woman presenter, whose name I can't recall, just came on and gave Hezbollah a piece of her mind. She said that she's spent the last year and a half doing reports on the lot of the people of the south and how they've suffered during the war of 2006 and after. Then she explained how al-Manar reported that the staff of Future TV "fled" the premises, like thieves or criminals, when in fact they were told to leave if they didn't want to die. She said that forgetting the parties and forgetting politics, this kind of treatment and the occupation of Beirut has made regular people, people like her, hate Hezbollah. She said that after people like her who did their best to take in refugees after the war in 2006 are treated like this and accused of being traitors, Hezbollah should be ashamed of itself. Of course a presenter on Future TV isn't exactly representative of the man on the street, but her point is well taken.

I can say, however, that the opposition has lost the sympathy of people who have supported the principles of the resistance, even if they had really ambivalent feelings about the religious and authoritarian form it's taken. And the traitor rhetoric is really hurtful and disgusting to people who support resistance against Israel but don't want to live in a country where the interests of the resistance trump those of the state. Calling people traitors like this smacks of Bush's rhetoric in the "war on terror," where you're either "with us or against us," and doesn't sit well with many Lebanese.

I never thought I'd say this, but there was part of Samir Geagea's speech this afternoon that I agree with. He said that the use of Hezbollah's weapons has delegitimized their very existence. I tend to agree with this idea, because Hezbollah has decided to use its weapons in an internal dispute between Lebanese actors. (Here, it's important to remember that the myth that Hezbollah has never been part of inter-Lebanese fighting fails to include when Amal and Hezbollah fought each the during the civil war.) What has happened is that the March 14 government made a decision that Hezbollah disagreed with, and in reaction to this, they took up arms and occupied half of Beirut. This means that the weapons whose sole purpose is supposed to deter Israeli aggression and defend Lebanon has been used as a blunt political tool to try to force the government to resign, or at the very least, send it a far-from-subtle message. 

The line being taken by the opposition now (at least as far as the talking heads of al-Manar are concerned) is that Hezbollah has helped the state put down militias (namely Mustaqbal, or the Future movement). This position fails to take into consideration, for example, the fact that there are still armed militia members of Amal and the Syrian Social Nationalist Party walking around West Beirut.

Either armed militias are illegal or they aren't. What's happened is that the Army seems to have passively taken the side of Hezbollah, which means that their legitimacy will be decreased or destroyed in the eyes of other Lebanese communities, especially the Sunnis in Saida and Tripoli. It has also sent the message that the most effective political tool is military force. I imagine, then, that the Sunnis in Saida and Tripoli, the pro-government Christians and the Druze loyal to Walid Jumblatt have likely decided that they can no longer count on the Army to be an impartial arbiter for the state. This will surely lead to increased militia training and arming. It wouldn't surprise me if the lesson that the Lebanese Forces and the PSP have taken from the defeat of Mustaqbal (probably the weakest of the pro-government parties/militias, if one of the nastier ones on a local neighborhood level) is that they should be prepared for more of the same in the not-so-distant future.

So where does this leave us? Despite rumors earlier today, it doesn't look like Saniora, or anyone else, will resign from the government. So what? There's still no president, and the fundamental dysfunction of the Lebanese state has only been highlighted, not solved. If this all ends with Hezbollah and its allied militias pulling back to their territory in the next day or so, leaving a humiliating message for the other parties and their militias, we'll be back to where we started. Back to where we started, except a big part of the population will have lost faith in the idea that Hezbollah and its allies can be dealt with within the norms of a democratic system.

Since there is no way that any of these groups can compete with Hezbollah's military forces, look for them to embrace proxies. This might include the Sunnis accepting al-Qaeda militants and other groups hoping for more Israeli intervention. I'm sure that after the disaster that was the war in 2006, the Israeli establishment wouldn't mind taking advantage of the situation for  rematch. In any case, what this situation hasn't done is foster an atmosphere where either side feels like it can compromise. If anything, this whole situation has pushed March 14 further into its corner and inflated the arrogance and confidence of Hezbollah and its allies in the country and abroad. Neither of which bodes well for peace or stability in Lebanon.

Amin Gemayel, whom I can't stand, called Hezbollah's victory a Pyrrhic one (actually, he said it in French, the snooty bastard). I tend to think that, on a national level and in the long term, he's probably right. In any case, it's enough to turn some Lebanese into bitter Mercutios.

The rumor I've been hearing now, to the glee of some Aounist Christians in my neighborhood, is that Prime Minister Saniora has resigned. I can't confirm this, but it really begs the question of what he would resign from. Premiership of what? There is no government. The military is sitting around doing absolutely nothing, which may be best for the lives of the soldiers but is disastrous for the life of the state. I walked down to the eastern side of the bridge that connects east and west Beirut, and it was being guarded by a couple of tanks and APCs and some soldiers. The latter were sitting around shooting the shit and listening to the radio. One was sleeping in the shadow of his APC. I've also seen it reported that Jumblatt was forced to flee his home in Clemenceau under the protection of the Army.

Despite the fact that the army is much weaker than Hezbollah and would have lost any real shooting match, I keep wondering to myself if one of the reasons the Army is staying out is because of the head of the Army, Michel Suleiman. He had been put forward as a compromise candidate for president. Now that Hezbollah is calling the shots, it will be interesting to see who they put forward as the president, or if they appoint anyone at all.

It obviously won't be Aoun, which means that he's pretty much outlived his usefulness to the opposition cum ruling party, due to the fact that he was only helpful to them so long as they were working within the system. Now that they have taken matters into their own hands, they really don't need him anymore. I don't think that Hezbollah would even try to put someone Franjieh into the presidential palace, so that pretty much only leaves Suleiman. Maybe he cut a deal with Hezbollah to stay out of the fighting in exchange for the presidency.

But even the question of who will be the president may be putting the cart before the horse. It isn't clear at all now what Hezbollah will do. Will there be a fight between the pro-Government Christian militias (Lebanese Forces and Phalangists) and Hezbollah? Will Hezbollah install a new government of its choosing based on the old system? Will they install a government composed purely of Hezbollah members? Will they call for new elections? Your guess is as good as mine.

What's sure though, is this: those who may have have been somewhat sympathetic to the underlying principles of "the Resistance" and Hezbollah's part in that movement despite (being uncomfortable with the idea of an explicitly religious party) are likely to be turned off by the last few days' events. The chorus has always been the Hezbollah would never turn its weapons inward, but it has done that now. At the end of the day, Hezbollah went outside of the rules of the game. That game may have been frustrating and often paralyzing, but at least it was nominally democratic. Now, even if they call for new elections, Hezbollah has broken the rules of the game by resorting to violence to achieve a political goal. A lot of people won't forgive or forget this, and there will be even more people who will never be able to trust the party of God to follow the rules of the (at least nominally) democratic system, because they have, for all intents and purposes, overthrown the government by force.

UPDATE: I just saw Aoun on television assuring viewers that no one would be persecuted. Maybe he didn't get the memo, but Hezbollah seized power without him or his help. He looks more like a remora sucking with all his might to be pulled along with Hezbollah, feasting on what's left of the already feeble Lebanese state.

The war is continuing, but my neighborhood looks like it's any other Saturday morning. The upscale carft shop, L'Artisan du Liban, is apparently open; there is a couple walking a dog; traffic is coming through; and Ethiopian maids are beating carpets and washing windows.

Meanwhile, in Hamra, Hezbollah took all of one night to defeat the Mostaqbal (Future, the pro-government Sunni militia) and take over the area. There are now (much more professional) Hezbollah militiamen running the areas. The Future movement's television channel was shut down, along with its newspaper and radio station. According to my friends, the army and Internal Security Forces (the latter trained by the US and loyal to Future's Hariri) are nowhere to be found.

There had been rumors about Mustaqbal training in the last year or two. I suppose we can put that notion to rest, because it only took a night for them to get their asses handed to them by Hezbollah.

So what now? Jumblatt made this point yesterday, saying that Hezbollah could easily occupy all of Beirut, but then what? I'm wondering what's going to happen to East Beirut. Are the Christians going to (or going to be allowed to) stay out of it all together? Will Hezbollah wait until Mustaqbal has been completely routed and then aim their sites at Christian Lebanese Forces and Phalangists? Will Hezbollah use its new-found posiiton of power to negotiate, or will it just be the government now?

For the moment, I can't tell that we're in a civil war by looking out the window, but had I left work an hour later yesterday, I'd probably be holed up in my office or at friends' watching street fighting all across the neighborhood that has traditionally been the safest place in Beirut.  

UPDATE: Artisan du Liban isn't actually open, but the building it's in is. Besides grocery stores, though, the Mana'eesh places are open, as are the hair salon, antique shop and carpet repair shop by my place. 

Also, it's been pointed out to me that it's Friday today, which goes to show you how much it feels like a Saturday today here.

The garbage men stop coming:

The 8 o'clock news is presented in a flack jacket:

I don't have a picture for this one, but another way you might know that you're in a civil war if there's no more bread at your local stores...

I'm watching Hassan Nasrallah's speech right now on television, and it's very contradictory. One moment he says that this is war and that the government's decision to get rid of their man at the airport and to declare the Party of God's newly discovered independent telecommunications network illegal was a declaration of war. He says that Hezbollah's weapons will never be turned inward, but then he says that he will cut that hand off that tries to touch those weapons. (Here it's important to remember that the telecommunication network has been newly classified as a resistance weapon.) I never thought I'd say this, but Nasrallah kind of reminded me of Rumsfeld today.

Sometimes I wonder if in 1975, people knew that they were in a civil war. I have a feeling that long after the day that we now recognize as the start of the war, many people didn't know they were in one. Everyone's talking about whether or not this means war. Somehow I've got the feeling that we're already in a civil war, but we just haven't realized it yet.

UPDATE: There's something decidedly disconcerting about hearing the RPG explode in the distance right before you hear it on the television. MY neighborhood is calm right now; the opposing Christian factions have so far kept their distance from the fighting, but I can hear automatic gun fire and RPGs in the distance. 1840, 1958, 1975, 2008? Plus ça change...

Raymond Tanter from WINEP and MESH has a post up about why the Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK), the Iranian militants who have committed terrorist attacks against the regime in Teheran and who were hosted by Saddam's Iraq, should be delisted from the State Department's list of terrorist organizations. Besides the fact that the MEK is against the Iranian regime, basically, his argument boils down to the fact that they haven't committed any acts of terrorism for a few years:

On April 25, Patrick Clawson, deputy director of research at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, wrote that designation “should be based only on terrorism issues,” and that State “cited no alleged MEK terrorist activity since 2001, yet have increased allegations pertaining [to] the group’s non-terrorist activities.” Country Reports 2007 continues this trend of making allegations that are irrelevant to terrorist designation.

Tanter attempts to argue that MEK doesn't have the capability to carry out terrorist attacks, whereas we all know that anyone with a back pack, a bus pass and household peroxide can commit an act of terrorism. So while this argument isn't very convincing, he tells us, "de-listing would provide diplomatic leverage over Tehran, as the West is presently failing to constrain the Iranian regime’s nuclear program, sponsorship of terrorism, and subversion of Iraq."

In other words, the US should use a terrorist group for political bargaining. Of course this is nothing new: the Bush family has a long history of using Cuban terrorists to apply pressure on the Castro regime. What's striking, though, is the moral indignation Republicans muster when someone supports talking to groups like Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood and Hezbollah (most of the violence committed by the last group having been aimed at military targets). Charges of moral equivalency and weak knees in the face of terror are immediately brandished.

Well, Orlando Bosch blew up a passenger plane killing all 73 civilians aboard. Jose Dionisio Suarez and Virgilio Paz Romero assassinated the Chilean diplomat Orlando Letelier in Washington. The Mujahedeen-e Khalq assassinated the deputy chief of the Iranian Armed Forces General Staff, Brigadier General Ali Sayyaad Shirazi and attacked Iranian embassies and installations in 13 different countries at the same time. They also bombed the head office of the Islamic Republic Party and the Prime Minister's office killing 70 people, including the Chief Justice, the President and the Prime Minister.

Either terrorism is an acceptable tactic, or it's not. Washington can't understand why the rest of the world sees America as hypocritical, but Tanter's desire for the US to have its cake and eat it too should give us a hunch. 

UPDATE: Thinking more about this today has reminded me of the question of when a group can legitimately be de-listed as a terrorist organization. If the fact that MEK hasn't committed any acts of terrorism since 2001 is really enough to prove that they've mended their ways, then the same ought to apply to Hezbollah as well, because depending on who was responsible for the Argentinean attacks and the kidnapping of Tannenbaum, they haven't committed any acts of terrorism since 2000, the mid-1990s or even the late 1980s.

Otherwise, supporting terrorist groups or rebels or militias in a neighboring country has long been a staple of statecraft. In Africa, Sudan, Chad, Ethiopia, Uganda and Eritrea each support groups in their neighbors' territory. Iran and Syria support Hamas and Hezbollah; Syria supported the PLO in Jordan; while Israel supported the SLA in Lebanon; and Iran trained the Iraqi Badr Brigage to fight against Saddam. Hell, the first car bomb in Iraq wasn't unleashed by Zarqawi, but rather by Iyad Allawi with the help of the CIA. So while I abhor the use of violence against civilians as a political tool, I'm not naive and do know it happens all over. It's the smug hypocrisy of the "War on Terror" that really gets my goat in the same way that the "Fair and Balanced" slogan annoys me way more than the actual Fox News coverage.

McClatchy has an interesting piece on Iranian Brig. Gen. Qassem Suleimani, the head of the Revolutionary Guard's Quds Force. The story includes an awfully high percentage of anonymous sources, and the title might be a little hyperbolic, but I think the overall points made are fair enough.

Iran has a lot of sway in Iraq, which is normal. What's silly, though, is that Americans see this as some sort of meddling, because Iranian interests in Iraq are not always the same as American interests (although I'd argue that they coincide much more often than either side would like to admit). If Iran were occupying Mexico or Canada, you can be sure that the US would be "meddling" as well.

As for the actual article, I don't really have too much to add, except that it's important to look at Iranian involvement in Iraq not as a spoiler or as some diabolical force. If the US is going to come to terms with Middle Eastern players (of which Iran has become a major one, due in no small part to American intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq), Washington is going to have to look at Teheran (and Damascus and Hezbollah and Hamas, for that matter) as actors who have interests in the region that can't be run over roughshod by America.

This is a reality. So just as when one deals with Zimbabwe, it's necessary to take Pretoria into account, or how when dealing with Burma or North Korea one can't ignore Beijing, the road to peace in Iraq must necessarily pass through Teheran, but not in the way that American hawks would like it to.

I'd like to offer a solution to the political impasse as presented by a friend of mine in Paris. I've translated it into English for the Anglophone audience, but the original can be found in the comments of the previous post:


The example of Lebanon inspires new political choices for me which consist of fighting to eliminate the presidential office. The revolution did not finish the job; it was necessary to cut off the head of the state; the only president of this country will remain a cheese.



I also think that since Lebanon can't find itself a capable man to rally all the parties behind him, it's making a recruiting error, for because this man doesn't exist, it's necessary to widen the recruitment to other species: animals, vegetables or maybe an object, a machine, something that symbolizes Lebanon, a new totem.

The list is long. What do you think about an octopus, a cedar, a Mercedes, a 4x4, a fork, a chick pea or a lubbia?

I know that N has a preference for donkeys, and maybe that isn't such a bad idea. It's a hardy animal that can carry heavy loads upon its shoulders without ever complaining.

I think you guys need a donkey. It's a noble animal that we must reclaim. Furthermore, that would allow the beginning of a new collection of stickers for parties and colors. I'll trade you my Hezbollah donkey for your Lebanese Forces carrot.

I don't know if my modest contribution will allow the country to get out of this crisis, but if you think it's useful, spread the word, because we never know, the world's going crazy, so let's take it at its word and enjoy it.

The conservative blogosphere is full of armchair quarterbacks and Middle East "experts" (see comments) who are fond of telling us about Arab propaganda and accusing the "MSM" of toeing the "terrorist" line. So from time to time, it's a good idea to drop in on the Israeli side of the beat:

Today's memo from the Israel Defense Forces censorship office:

1. Real-time reports on the exact locations of rocket hits are strictly prohibited. Reports, on delayed-time, of exact locations must always be approved by the IDF Censor.

2. The IDF Censor will not authorize reports of rocket hits at IDF bases and/or strategic installations.

3. The IDF Censor will not authorize reporting on rockets that fell into the Mediterranean Sea.

4. The IDF Censor will not authorize photographs of rockets with identifying marks.

5. The IDF Censor will not authorize reports regarding visits by senior Israel Government officials and IDF officer in southern Israel.

6. The IDF Censor will not authorize information on exploded terrorist ordinance or any other malfunctioning ordinance.

7. Panoramic, wide-angle, etc. photographs of rocket hits are strictly prohibited.

Please ensure that all staff members are aware of the foregoing.

The foregoing does not obviate the obligation to submit to the IDF Censor – prior to publication – of any news item regarding rocket hits or any other subject that must be approved by the IDF Censor.

When complaining about a militant guerilla organization's restrictions on reporting, I think it's only fair to recall that the other side actually has a censorship office.

Sometimes I forget that I live by the sea. It's easy enough to do, what with Beirut traffic, honking horns and the city's urban brown and grey. Usually, I'm reminded by a glimpse of the Mediterranean from Ras Beirut, which sometimes prompts me to take a stroll on the corniche to smell the water.

Today, however, I was reminded by a taxi driver talking about the USS Cole, the US carrier that was attacked in Yemen and has now been deployed off the coast of Lebanon. No one I talked to today thought that the ship would actually do anything. Everyone seemed to agree that it was just a show of force by the US.

One Hezbollah partisan from Saida told me that if there were a war and the USS Cole was involved, it would be sunk. Then again, he also told me that he thought the Party of God would not only defeat Israel again this summer but also destroy the Jewish state. (I had to stop myself from laughing when he spoke of Hezbollah's 1 million troops, which would make up one in every four Lebanese citizens.)

In any case, no one seemed excited about the ship's presence in the area. A colleague of mine, an American-Lebanese Christian mother of four who supports March 14, also told me that she thought it was a bad idea.

At the end of the day, I think we've already got enough saber rattling here, and adding the noise of an additional and enormous American saber to the mix is probably the last thing we need here. Ironically, however, the US Navy's stated rationale for the deployment is stability. 

Hassan Nasrallah spoke this week, making this disconcerting remark:

I tell the shallow minds in Lebanon, who speak about war and peace decisions, that Israel is the only side that has been taking the decision of war or peace. The decision that we take is our legitimate, moral, humane and natural right in order to defend our people, land and country at a time of negligence by the government and the world.

While this is true to a limited extent, there are times when it takes two to tango, and now is one of those times. We know that the assassination of Mughniyeh was an escalation in the region, but we also know that there's a very high chance that if/when Hezbollah retaliates against Israel, Israel will attack Lebanon again.

Many Hezbollah partisans argue that it's their "right" to retaliate and generally agree that Israel would react to an assassinated ambassador, for example, with an attack on Lebanon. They have a tougher time, however, answering my question as to whether or not exercising their "right" to retaliate is worth plunging the country into another war.

Likewise, when I ask whether the rest of the country (as opposed to just the cadres of Hezbollah) ought not have a say in such a decision, these partisans generally insist (with an obstinate attitude that certainly is representative of Lebanese politics) that they do represent the whole country.

During the July war, one could still plausibly say that the brutal Israeli reaction was unexpected. In 2008, however, almost no one seems to doubt what the consequences of retaliation against Israel would mean for Lebanon. Regardless of whether or not another Israeli war would be legitimate, it certainly won't be unexpected. And I haven't been able to find anyone who's willing to come out and say that avenging the assassination of Mughniyeh is worth the lives of another thousand Lebanese people.

In another bid to see who can talk up Imad Mughniyeh the most as super terrorist extraordinaire (which was, until recently, mainly a contest between Hezbollah and Israel), an-Nahar's English-language site is now claiming that he was, in fact, responsible for the founding of the Mehdi Army in Iraq. While I'm no expert on the Mehdi Army, this claim seems more than a little over the top to me.

I'm just waiting to hear the news that Mughniyeh was also responsible for Pearl Harbor and all those bombings in Corsica and Spanish Basque country.

For a much more sober, and informed, view of the situation, I recommend this Newshour interview with Mohamad Bazzi and Robert Baer.

I've been missing in action for a while, even after my trip to Ethiopia, which I'll have a lot more on later.

Since I've been back, however, a lot has happened. Imad Mughniya was killed in a car bomb in Damascus (shortly after Michael Totten said I was one of the "notorious leftists who endlessly excuses Hezbollah" and accused me of spreading propaganda when I mentioned that car bombs were used by the American side as well in the comments here). Yesterday was the third anniversary of Hariri's assassination. And finally, there was just a small earthquake (more of a tremor, really) here in Beirut.

I don't have much to say about the first topic, but I will say that I always feel uncomfortable with any kind of extra-judicial killing and assassination, no matter whom it's done by. Also, this seems to be either a very serious breach of Syrian security or evidence that Damascus gave the Israelis or Americans the ok to carry out the attack as part of a larger deal. In any case, it signals an escalation between Hezbollah and Israel, so it wouldn't surprise me if there's an external (outside of Lebanon and Israel) attack against Israeli (or even American) interests. After all, the 1992 Israeli embassy bombing in Argentina was retaliation for the assassination of Hezbollah Secretary General Abbas al-Musawi, who was replaced by Nasrallah. Such escalation is always a bad thing for all parties involved.

As for the February 14 event, I went downtown to give it a look as Geagea was speaking, and it wasn't too big, although I didn't show up until about noon. One big reason for this was that it was rainy and cold. I was a bit worried about clashes arising last night between mourners of Hariri and Mughniya, but the cold rain was probably a blessing in disguise in that it's hard to get riled up to go out looking for trouble when you're soaking wet.

Finally, the earthquake: I didn't feel it, but I heard a rumble. All of my colleagues seem to have felt it, which might just mean that I'm insensitive, so to speak.

It's just occurred to me that there aren't very many places in the world where I could post about an earthquake, a car bomb and a protest against an assassination in the same piece. How's that for potpourri, Alex Trebek?

Back July 2006, Israel was "just defending itself" while laying waste to Lebanon after the capture of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah. However Israel is mystified when two rockets are fired from the South of Lebanon into Israeli territory this week. To hear Haaretz tell it, those rockets just came out of the blue for no good reason:

Earlier Tuesday, Israel filed a severe complaint with the United Nations Security Council and with Ban over the Katyusha firing.

The rockets struck the western Galilee town of Shlomi early Tuesday morning, causing no injuries. One of the rockets lightly damaged a house, and the second hit a street in the twon. Army Radio reported that the second rocket damaged an electricity pole.

The complaint called the rocket fire a severe violation of Security Council Resolution 1701, which brought the Second Lebanon War to an end.

According to the complaint, the rocket fire was additional evidence the resolution has yet to be fully implemented and therefore there is still a threat to Israel...

In the whole article there isn't a single mention of the shepherd Fadi Ahmad Abdel Aal, who was kidnapped the day before by the IDF:

The Israeli military said it had detained a man crossing the border with Lebanon.

"During an IDF (Israeli army) activity a suspect was identified crossing the Blue Line into Israel. He was arrested inside Israel and has been taken in for questioning," an Israeli army spokeswoman said.

She declined to give the suspect's nationality but said he was not Israeli.

However, a Lebanese security source told AFP the Israeli soldiers had abducted a man they named as Fadi Ahmad Abdel Aal inside Lebanon and "brought him inside Israel with them.

"The soldiers made an incursion of 100 metres (yards) to reach agricultural land where they found the shepherd," the source said on condition of anonymity.

The UN peacekeeping force said it had been informed of the incident by the Israeli military.

"UNIFIL has been informed by the IDF that they have apprehended a Lebanese citizen and we are in contact with them in order to resolve the situation as soon as possible," UNIFIL spokeswoman Yasmina Bouziane told AFP.

Israeli forces have in the past seized Lebanese shepherds along the border and taken them for questioning over possible links with Hezbollah militants. They are usually released after questioning.

So let's just recap here: in 2006, two Israeli soldiers are captured by Hezbollah, and that warrants a month-long spasm of bombs that killed over 1,000 civilians. This week, a Lebanese shepherd is "detained" (not to say kidnapped) by the IDF, and when two rockets are fired into Israel resulting in no casualties, this is "evidence" that "there is still a threat to Israel."

When it comes to Israel, what's good for the goose, it seems, is not good for the gander.

I generally try to stay away from the National Review. This explains why I didn't see the inane and meretricious "reporting" done by W. Thomas Smith Jr. until today. I've commented here before on ridiculous and sensationalist accounts of Lebanon, but this guy really takes the cake. Smith wrote last September:

Hezbollah is rehearsing for something big here. Not sure what or when. But a few days ago, between 4,000 and 5,000 HezB gunmen deployed to the Christian areas of Beirut in an unsettling “show of force,” positioning themselves at road intersections and other key points throughout the city.

It just so happens that I live on the East side of town in one of the "Christian areas of Beirut," and I can guarantee that Smith's account is laughably untrue. On the day that Smith says Hezbollah "deployed" to East Beirut, I was doing some shopping. I live on the border of Gemmayzeh and Mar Mkhail and went to Sassine and ABC that day (all of which are Christian neighborhoods), and rest assured, there were no Hezbollah militants, much less armed ones, to be seen anywhere.  Had what he described been true, there would most likely have been a civil war, or at the very least isolated street fighting. As it was, not only was there no fighting, but not a single journalist in Beirut, foreign or Lebanese, picked up on Hezbollah's alleged "show of force." There's a very simple reason for this: it never happened. If Hezbollah were to deploy a dozen armed militants to Achrafieh, that would be crossing one of Lebanon's red lines. Saying that there were 4,000-5,000 gunmen here is beyond farfetched; it's in the realm of the outlandishly comic. 

I've had neither the time, nor the stomach, to wade through all of this guy's Lebanon "coverage," but the few pieces I've opened are risible in their ridiculousness. Here's another example:

Hezbollah are not the only terrorists operating here in Lebanon: There are also Al Qaeda affiliates like Fatah Al Islam (they were not totally wiped out at Nahr al Bared), as well as Jund al Sham (Soldiers of Damascus), Jundallah, Hamas, and — though few Americans are aware of this — operating elements of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps on the Lebanese side of the Lebanese-Syrian border. These are just a few of the problem groups here: All operating under the auspices of Hezbollah.

Despite his mistranslation of "Sham," which in this context means Greater Syria (Syria, Lebanon and Palestine) and not Damascus, this little excerpt is absurd in that it explicitly says that all of the al-Qaeda-affiliated groups operating in the Palestinian camps, as well as Hamas and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard are "operating under the auspices of Hezbollah." First of all, no one knows who is connected to the various groups operating in the Palestinian camps. And second of all, anyone who believes that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard is "under the auspices" of Hezbollah, and not the other way around, obviously knows nothing about either organization.

Smith's scattergun approach to various armed groups in Lebanon is symptomatic of a larger, mostly American, approach to the Middle East, where al-Qaeda equals Hezbollah equals Hamas equals al Qaeda in Iraq equals Jund al-Sham ,etc. This is the kind of thinking that led most Americans to believe that Baghdad had something to do with 9/11 and leaves the defenders of the free world (see also: Reyes and Sarkozy) incapable of distinguishing between Sunnis and Shi'a.

Another fun read is this post, in which Smith brags about doing "reconnaissance" in the Dahiye, the suburbs where Hezbollah is based in Beirut. Or rather this would be funny if it were a satire and I were reading it to friends in Beirut. This guy seems to think that he's in a Chuck Norris movie, which would be fine except for a couple of things. First, this "journalism," in which Smith writes about spying on Hezbollah for pro-Government groups not only makes him sound like a macho asshole, it also casts a shadow of doubt on legitimate journalism done by actual reporters in a country where foreign correspondents are already viewed with an air of suspicion. Second, it makes Beirut sound like a war zone, which it's clearly not.

And then there's this gem. According to Smith, there were "some 200-plus heavily armed Hezbollah militiamen — positioned between the parliament and the Serail." As it happens, I've spent a fair amount of time downtown, and this is not the first time I've written about Americans talking about the sit-in protest without knowing what they're talking about. For the last few months, it's been hard to find more than a couple of dozen people at the protest, much less hundreds of armed militants. I have never, I repeat: never, seen any Hezbollah weapons downtown. They may have them down there, but if they do, they're hidden so well that someone who regularly strolls through the camp would not see them. To suggest that he surprised 200 armed militants out in the open while driving over the bridge that connects East and West Beirut is ridiculous.   

Finally, Jack Bauer -- I mean W. Thomas Smith Jr. -- gives us a post from an "undisclosed neighborhood":

Lebanon is extremely dangerous for Americans right now. In fact, some top officials within the 1559 Committee (essentially the heart and soul of the Cedars Revolution ... for a free Lebanon) believe some sort of dramatic terrorist event is going to take place here in Lebanon between now and mid-October. This is not a gut feeling, but a calculation based on intelligence analysis and chatter from the street.

Tony Nissi, the 1559 Committee chief here in Beirut (whom you'll recall from previous entries), has reason to believe Hezbollah knows who I am. So I am deliberately not staying in hotels: Instead, I'm spending nights in friends' houses — safe houses if you will — and always with bodyguards.

This one is the funniest of the bunch. If there are only half of the number of Americans in Lebanon now as there were during the July war, there'd still be over 10,000 Americans here, myself included. Beirut is decidedly not unsafe for Americans, unless of course they decide to go play G.I. Joe by arming themselves and doing "reconnaissance." But even if Smith were to get picked up by Hezbollah or the Army for spying (which is basically what he claims he's doing), they'd immediately recognize him for the  buffoon that he plainly is. He sounds more like a hapless character out of a Harry Mathews novel than an actual spy, or, God forbid, a journalist.

I could go on for pages about the factual inaccuracy of Smith's reports, but it would just be more of the same. It's amazing to me that NRO published any of Smith's "reports." They are so obviously bullshit that someone must have been asleep at the wheel over there. One of my pet peeves is the writing of partisan hacks who only travel for rhetorical flair, and Smith seems to be more of the same. The difference is that his case is so egregious that he's getting called out on it. There are well respected journalists here in Lebanon and elsewhere who not only know the country intimately but are good writers to boot. Anthony Shadid, Annia Ciezadlo and Mohamad Bazzi are only a few of the names that come to mind. So why is there a need to send Chuck Norris wannabe hacks like Smith who evidently don't know anything about the countries they're ostensibly covering? If NRO wants coverage of Lebanon, there's no dearth of talent already here in Beirut. Insisting on publishing Smith's fabrications in order to toe an ideological line that pays no heed of Lebanon's complex politics only makes NRO look stupid and dishonest.

If you're interested in NRO's response to similar allegations, you can see that here and here.

UPDATE: Kathryn Jean Lopez, online editor of the National Review has another statement up about Smith (emphasis mine):

With regard to the two posts in question, it is my belief, based on an investigation in which NRO discussed the matter with three independent sources who live and work in Lebanon (as well as other experts in the area), that Smith was probably either spun by his sources or confused about what he saw.

...the context that Smith was operating in an uncertain environment where he couldn't always be sure of what he was witnessing, and the caveats that he filled in the gaps by talking to sources within the Cedar Revolution movement and the Lebanese national-security apparatus, whose claims obviously should have been been treated with the same degree of skepticism as those of anyone with an agenda to advance.

As one of our sources put it: "The Arab tendency to lie and exaggerate about enemies is alive and well among pro-American Lebanese Christians as much as it is with the likes of Hamas." While Smith vouches for his sources, we cannot independently verify what they told him. That's why we're revisiting the posts in question and warning readers to take them with a grain of salt.

So let me get this straight. Lopez publishes Smith's ridiculous posts that betray a fundamental ignorance of Lebanon and the political situation here, posts which were either made up entirely or fed to him by pro-Government forces, and the problem here is the "Arab tendency to lie and exaggerate."

Wow. I almost don't even know where to start with this one. Maybe she should just throw in another couple of lines about America's mission civilisatrice and the white man's burden and be done with it.

In any case, someone should send her message to Tom Harb, a rabid March 14 supporter in the US, who's supporting Smith wholeheartedly (from Florida, no less) and accusing all of the journalists who have contradicted Smith of being on the Hezbollah payroll. Someone should remind him that his neo-conservative comrades in arms at NRO and elsewhere are fair weather friends to whom, at the end of the day, a wog is a wog, regardless of his political usefulness.

I spent this past weekend in the Chouf mountain, otherwise known as the personal fiefdom of Walid Jumblatt. I was looking forward to visiting the Moukhtara and its beautiful castle, and given the tense situation, I was surprised when my friend told me that conforming to Druze tradition, I could go have tea with and briefly meet Jumblatt -- or even ask him for something. Saturday morning is the time when the Moukhtara is open, and all are given tea while they wait for an audience with Walid Bek.

My timing was off, though, because it seems that US ambassador to Lebanon, Jeffrey Feltman, was due to arrive shortly for a lunch with Jumblatt and no amount of wasta with Jumblatt's private security detail was going to get us in.

One thing that bothers me about Lebanon is the checkpoints. They're a hassle, but given the situation, they seem necessary. What really gets to me though are those run by militias. Any journalist covering the south or Bekaa, or even parts of the Dahiye, are familiar with Hezbollah's stops, although I've never personally had to show my ID to anyone from Hezbollah, and despite my frequent trips to and through the sit-in downtown, I've never seen a member of the party armed.

Now March 14 and its allies are fond of complaining about the "state within a state" that is Hezbollah, but what you hear less about are their own states within a state. (Incidentally, I'm not fond of the expression, because in order for it to be true, there'd have to be a state within which to have a state -- something that just isn't true here.) While there are army checkpoints all around the Moukhtara, the guys with machine guns at the gate are PSP militia. They've got neither badge nor uniform -- their gun and the confidence of Walid being their only license for checking my ID. But these are the higher ranked guards, down the street, working at the local mechanic and sitting in a little booth are kids with walkie talkies.

When we decided to take a walk around the Moukhtara, we were immediately stopped by a kid who couldn't have been over 20 years old. I think he was intimidated by us, so when we refused to show any ID and only gave our first names, he called someone else as we were walking away. The second guy was only a little older and looked like he should be working second spatula at a saj stand. But there he was, asking for our ID. My friend looked him in the eye, immediately getting angry, and asked him where his ID was. After some prompting, the young and round boy opened his wallet and flashed a normal ID without letting us take it out or look at it too long. When we asked what gave him the authority to stop us, he lifted his shirt and showed us his walkie talkie. The Chouf, it seems, isn't so different from the south after all.

The rest of my trip, barring an embarrassing run-in with the way-too-friendly (and touchy!) tour guide at Beiteddine, was a welcome change from the city. Like true mountain men, we ate heartily and shot guns, and the clean air cleared my persistent cold right up.

Also, the Cedar reserve reminded me of something out of a fairy tale:

Thanks to those who have sent messages wondering if I was all right and where I was. I took a trip up to the Chouf on Tuesday and spent the night in a village in the mountain. I visited some of the Druze shebab to see how things were and how they were feeling after their unexpected victory over Hezbollah in Barouk.

When I got back to Beirut, what I thought was just a long electricity cut turned out to be several days without power (that's getting fixed while I type, insh'allah). So I've been out of the loop, news and otherwise, and will need some time to wrap my head around things before posting any comments about the situation.

There's also the fact that during the last week, I've not really wanted to do much except sleep. As a result, I didn't get any work done and am now swamped with things that have been left undone up to now.

This seems to be shaping up to be a full-scale coup d'état by Hezbollah with the support of the army. It looks like they're going piece by piece. Future was first, now the PSP is being taken in the Chouf, and I imagine the Lebanese Forces in the Christian sectors will be next.

The rest of the Lebanese parties were no match for Hezbollah, but when you throw in the army, what can you expect? Hariri and Joumblatt seem to have agreed not to fight, probably to save the bloodshed that would not have stopped the coup in any case. So they've agreed to go quietly in exchange for there not being a battle to which Future and PSP partisans would have gone like lambs to the slaughter.

The army seems to have cut a deal with Hezbollah, but it's hard to say what they could have done in any case, since they're so much weaker than the Party of God. So the current government will most likely be forced to resign, Suleiman will be appointed as president, and someone pliable will be appointed to be Prime Minister. Things will be like before 2005, except that instead of taking marching orders from Damascus, the new government will answer to Harat Hreik.

Yesterday, I spent a good part of the day in Hamra, where SSNP thugs were still armed and around. They broke up a group of unarmed neighborhood residents (most of whom were with Future) by shooting in the air and shouting. The night before a 16-year-old boy had been killed while delivering a narguileh for the shop he worked for. When they finally had a hard time getting the group of the boy's friends, family and neighbors to go inside despite plenty of shooting, they left. Shortly afterward, the Army finally showed up. The SSNP gunmen were going around Hamra without any challenge from the Army.

Today, things seem to be much better in West Beirut (although I haven't been there today), but fighting has spread all over the country, with Hezbollah apparently shelling a Druze village and opposition Druze forces fighting the PSP in Aley. Clashes are also going on in in Shweifat.

Add this to the fighting in Tripoli, and the death toll is nearly 40 now. In the words of Yeats:

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Another thing that's been bothering me is the fact that Mostaqbal's media outlets were shut down. I won't pretend that part of me doesn't feel a little tinge of delight at the idea of the Mostaqbal thugs getting some comeuppance. But punishing neighborhood thugs who fancy themselves militiamen is one thing, while shutting down media outlets is another. During the 2006 war, Hezbollah was (rightfully, to my mind) outraged by Israel's targeting of their television station, al-Manar. So why is it acceptable to have shut down Future TV?

I'm watching Kalam an-Nass right now, while the head of Future TV is being interviewed. According to him, a Lebanese soldier, in uniform, told them that they had to open the gates or else they'd be killed by Hezbollah militiamen. This is, of course, disconcerting on several levels. First of all, this would mean that a member of the ostensibly neutral Lebanese Army would have helped Hezbollah shut down the media outlet of a competing political party. But regardless of whether or not a soldier helped Hezbollah shut the station down, the latter certainly did disconnect Future TV. This is scandalous, and Hezbollah should be ashamed of itself.

A woman presenter, whose name I can't recall, just came on and gave Hezbollah a piece of her mind. She said that she's spent the last year and a half doing reports on the lot of the people of the south and how they've suffered during the war of 2006 and after. Then she explained how al-Manar reported that the staff of Future TV "fled" the premises, like thieves or criminals, when in fact they were told to leave if they didn't want to die. She said that forgetting the parties and forgetting politics, this kind of treatment and the occupation of Beirut has made regular people, people like her, hate Hezbollah. She said that after people like her who did their best to take in refugees after the war in 2006 are treated like this and accused of being traitors, Hezbollah should be ashamed of itself. Of course a presenter on Future TV isn't exactly representative of the man on the street, but her point is well taken.

I can say, however, that the opposition has lost the sympathy of people who have supported the principles of the resistance, even if they had really ambivalent feelings about the religious and authoritarian form it's taken. And the traitor rhetoric is really hurtful and disgusting to people who support resistance against Israel but don't want to live in a country where the interests of the resistance trump those of the state. Calling people traitors like this smacks of Bush's rhetoric in the "war on terror," where you're either "with us or against us," and doesn't sit well with many Lebanese.

I never thought I'd say this, but there was part of Samir Geagea's speech this afternoon that I agree with. He said that the use of Hezbollah's weapons has delegitimized their very existence. I tend to agree with this idea, because Hezbollah has decided to use its weapons in an internal dispute between Lebanese actors. (Here, it's important to remember that the myth that Hezbollah has never been part of inter-Lebanese fighting fails to include when Amal and Hezbollah fought each the during the civil war.) What has happened is that the March 14 government made a decision that Hezbollah disagreed with, and in reaction to this, they took up arms and occupied half of Beirut. This means that the weapons whose sole purpose is supposed to deter Israeli aggression and defend Lebanon has been used as a blunt political tool to try to force the government to resign, or at the very least, send it a far-from-subtle message. 

The line being taken by the opposition now (at least as far as the talking heads of al-Manar are concerned) is that Hezbollah has helped the state put down militias (namely Mustaqbal, or the Future movement). This position fails to take into consideration, for example, the fact that there are still armed militia members of Amal and the Syrian Social Nationalist Party walking around West Beirut.

Either armed militias are illegal or they aren't. What's happened is that the Army seems to have passively taken the side of Hezbollah, which means that their legitimacy will be decreased or destroyed in the eyes of other Lebanese communities, especially the Sunnis in Saida and Tripoli. It has also sent the message that the most effective political tool is military force. I imagine, then, that the Sunnis in Saida and Tripoli, the pro-government Christians and the Druze loyal to Walid Jumblatt have likely decided that they can no longer count on the Army to be an impartial arbiter for the state. This will surely lead to increased militia training and arming. It wouldn't surprise me if the lesson that the Lebanese Forces and the PSP have taken from the defeat of Mustaqbal (probably the weakest of the pro-government parties/militias, if one of the nastier ones on a local neighborhood level) is that they should be prepared for more of the same in the not-so-distant future.

So where does this leave us? Despite rumors earlier today, it doesn't look like Saniora, or anyone else, will resign from the government. So what? There's still no president, and the fundamental dysfunction of the Lebanese state has only been highlighted, not solved. If this all ends with Hezbollah and its allied militias pulling back to their territory in the next day or so, leaving a humiliating message for the other parties and their militias, we'll be back to where we started. Back to where we started, except a big part of the population will have lost faith in the idea that Hezbollah and its allies can be dealt with within the norms of a democratic system.

Since there is no way that any of these groups can compete with Hezbollah's military forces, look for them to embrace proxies. This might include the Sunnis accepting al-Qaeda militants and other groups hoping for more Israeli intervention. I'm sure that after the disaster that was the war in 2006, the Israeli establishment wouldn't mind taking advantage of the situation for  rematch. In any case, what this situation hasn't done is foster an atmosphere where either side feels like it can compromise. If anything, this whole situation has pushed March 14 further into its corner and inflated the arrogance and confidence of Hezbollah and its allies in the country and abroad. Neither of which bodes well for peace or stability in Lebanon.

Amin Gemayel, whom I can't stand, called Hezbollah's victory a Pyrrhic one (actually, he said it in French, the snooty bastard). I tend to think that, on a national level and in the long term, he's probably right. In any case, it's enough to turn some Lebanese into bitter Mercutios.

The rumor I've been hearing now, to the glee of some Aounist Christians in my neighborhood, is that Prime Minister Saniora has resigned. I can't confirm this, but it really begs the question of what he would resign from. Premiership of what? There is no government. The military is sitting around doing absolutely nothing, which may be best for the lives of the soldiers but is disastrous for the life of the state. I walked down to the eastern side of the bridge that connects east and west Beirut, and it was being guarded by a couple of tanks and APCs and some soldiers. The latter were sitting around shooting the shit and listening to the radio. One was sleeping in the shadow of his APC. I've also seen it reported that Jumblatt was forced to flee his home in Clemenceau under the protection of the Army.

Despite the fact that the army is much weaker than Hezbollah and would have lost any real shooting match, I keep wondering to myself if one of the reasons the Army is staying out is because of the head of the Army, Michel Suleiman. He had been put forward as a compromise candidate for president. Now that Hezbollah is calling the shots, it will be interesting to see who they put forward as the president, or if they appoint anyone at all.

It obviously won't be Aoun, which means that he's pretty much outlived his usefulness to the opposition cum ruling party, due to the fact that he was only helpful to them so long as they were working within the system. Now that they have taken matters into their own hands, they really don't need him anymore. I don't think that Hezbollah would even try to put someone Franjieh into the presidential palace, so that pretty much only leaves Suleiman. Maybe he cut a deal with Hezbollah to stay out of the fighting in exchange for the presidency.

But even the question of who will be the president may be putting the cart before the horse. It isn't clear at all now what Hezbollah will do. Will there be a fight between the pro-Government Christian militias (Lebanese Forces and Phalangists) and Hezbollah? Will Hezbollah install a new government of its choosing based on the old system? Will they install a government composed purely of Hezbollah members? Will they call for new elections? Your guess is as good as mine.

What's sure though, is this: those who may have have been somewhat sympathetic to the underlying principles of "the Resistance" and Hezbollah's part in that movement despite (being uncomfortable with the idea of an explicitly religious party) are likely to be turned off by the last few days' events. The chorus has always been the Hezbollah would never turn its weapons inward, but it has done that now. At the end of the day, Hezbollah went outside of the rules of the game. That game may have been frustrating and often paralyzing, but at least it was nominally democratic. Now, even if they call for new elections, Hezbollah has broken the rules of the game by resorting to violence to achieve a political goal. A lot of people won't forgive or forget this, and there will be even more people who will never be able to trust the party of God to follow the rules of the (at least nominally) democratic system, because they have, for all intents and purposes, overthrown the government by force.

UPDATE: I just saw Aoun on television assuring viewers that no one would be persecuted. Maybe he didn't get the memo, but Hezbollah seized power without him or his help. He looks more like a remora sucking with all his might to be pulled along with Hezbollah, feasting on what's left of the already feeble Lebanese state.

The war is continuing, but my neighborhood looks like it's any other Saturday morning. The upscale carft shop, L'Artisan du Liban, is apparently open; there is a couple walking a dog; traffic is coming through; and Ethiopian maids are beating carpets and washing windows.

Meanwhile, in Hamra, Hezbollah took all of one night to defeat the Mostaqbal (Future, the pro-government Sunni militia) and take over the area. There are now (much more professional) Hezbollah militiamen running the areas. The Future movement's television channel was shut down, along with its newspaper and radio station. According to my friends, the army and Internal Security Forces (the latter trained by the US and loyal to Future's Hariri) are nowhere to be found.

There had been rumors about Mustaqbal training in the last year or two. I suppose we can put that notion to rest, because it only took a night for them to get their asses handed to them by Hezbollah.

So what now? Jumblatt made this point yesterday, saying that Hezbollah could easily occupy all of Beirut, but then what? I'm wondering what's going to happen to East Beirut. Are the Christians going to (or going to be allowed to) stay out of it all together? Will Hezbollah wait until Mustaqbal has been completely routed and then aim their sites at Christian Lebanese Forces and Phalangists? Will Hezbollah use its new-found posiiton of power to negotiate, or will it just be the government now?

For the moment, I can't tell that we're in a civil war by looking out the window, but had I left work an hour later yesterday, I'd probably be holed up in my office or at friends' watching street fighting all across the neighborhood that has traditionally been the safest place in Beirut.  

UPDATE: Artisan du Liban isn't actually open, but the building it's in is. Besides grocery stores, though, the Mana'eesh places are open, as are the hair salon, antique shop and carpet repair shop by my place. 

Also, it's been pointed out to me that it's Friday today, which goes to show you how much it feels like a Saturday today here.

The garbage men stop coming:

The 8 o'clock news is presented in a flack jacket:

I don't have a picture for this one, but another way you might know that you're in a civil war if there's no more bread at your local stores...

I'm watching Hassan Nasrallah's speech right now on television, and it's very contradictory. One moment he says that this is war and that the government's decision to get rid of their man at the airport and to declare the Party of God's newly discovered independent telecommunications network illegal was a declaration of war. He says that Hezbollah's weapons will never be turned inward, but then he says that he will cut that hand off that tries to touch those weapons. (Here it's important to remember that the telecommunication network has been newly classified as a resistance weapon.) I never thought I'd say this, but Nasrallah kind of reminded me of Rumsfeld today.

Sometimes I wonder if in 1975, people knew that they were in a civil war. I have a feeling that long after the day that we now recognize as the start of the war, many people didn't know they were in one. Everyone's talking about whether or not this means war. Somehow I've got the feeling that we're already in a civil war, but we just haven't realized it yet.

UPDATE: There's something decidedly disconcerting about hearing the RPG explode in the distance right before you hear it on the television. MY neighborhood is calm right now; the opposing Christian factions have so far kept their distance from the fighting, but I can hear automatic gun fire and RPGs in the distance. 1840, 1958, 1975, 2008? Plus ça change...

Raymond Tanter from WINEP and MESH has a post up about why the Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK), the Iranian militants who have committed terrorist attacks against the regime in Teheran and who were hosted by Saddam's Iraq, should be delisted from the State Department's list of terrorist organizations. Besides the fact that the MEK is against the Iranian regime, basically, his argument boils down to the fact that they haven't committed any acts of terrorism for a few years:

On April 25, Patrick Clawson, deputy director of research at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, wrote that designation “should be based only on terrorism issues,” and that State “cited no alleged MEK terrorist activity since 2001, yet have increased allegations pertaining [to] the group’s non-terrorist activities.” Country Reports 2007 continues this trend of making allegations that are irrelevant to terrorist designation.

Tanter attempts to argue that MEK doesn't have the capability to carry out terrorist attacks, whereas we all know that anyone with a back pack, a bus pass and household peroxide can commit an act of terrorism. So while this argument isn't very convincing, he tells us, "de-listing would provide diplomatic leverage over Tehran, as the West is presently failing to constrain the Iranian regime’s nuclear program, sponsorship of terrorism, and subversion of Iraq."

In other words, the US should use a terrorist group for political bargaining. Of course this is nothing new: the Bush family has a long history of using Cuban terrorists to apply pressure on the Castro regime. What's striking, though, is the moral indignation Republicans muster when someone supports talking to groups like Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood and Hezbollah (most of the violence committed by the last group having been aimed at military targets). Charges of moral equivalency and weak knees in the face of terror are immediately brandished.

Well, Orlando Bosch blew up a passenger plane killing all 73 civilians aboard. Jose Dionisio Suarez and Virgilio Paz Romero assassinated the Chilean diplomat Orlando Letelier in Washington. The Mujahedeen-e Khalq assassinated the deputy chief of the Iranian Armed Forces General Staff, Brigadier General Ali Sayyaad Shirazi and attacked Iranian embassies and installations in 13 different countries at the same time. They also bombed the head office of the Islamic Republic Party and the Prime Minister's office killing 70 people, including the Chief Justice, the President and the Prime Minister.

Either terrorism is an acceptable tactic, or it's not. Washington can't understand why the rest of the world sees America as hypocritical, but Tanter's desire for the US to have its cake and eat it too should give us a hunch. 

UPDATE: Thinking more about this today has reminded me of the question of when a group can legitimately be de-listed as a terrorist organization. If the fact that MEK hasn't committed any acts of terrorism since 2001 is really enough to prove that they've mended their ways, then the same ought to apply to Hezbollah as well, because depending on who was responsible for the Argentinean attacks and the kidnapping of Tannenbaum, they haven't committed any acts of terrorism since 2000, the mid-1990s or even the late 1980s.

Otherwise, supporting terrorist groups or rebels or militias in a neighboring country has long been a staple of statecraft. In Africa, Sudan, Chad, Ethiopia, Uganda and Eritrea each support groups in their neighbors' territory. Iran and Syria support Hamas and Hezbollah; Syria supported the PLO in Jordan; while Israel supported the SLA in Lebanon; and Iran trained the Iraqi Badr Brigage to fight against Saddam. Hell, the first car bomb in Iraq wasn't unleashed by Zarqawi, but rather by Iyad Allawi with the help of the CIA. So while I abhor the use of violence against civilians as a political tool, I'm not naive and do know it happens all over. It's the smug hypocrisy of the "War on Terror" that really gets my goat in the same way that the "Fair and Balanced" slogan annoys me way more than the actual Fox News coverage.

McClatchy has an interesting piece on Iranian Brig. Gen. Qassem Suleimani, the head of the Revolutionary Guard's Quds Force. The story includes an awfully high percentage of anonymous sources, and the title might be a little hyperbolic, but I think the overall points made are fair enough.

Iran has a lot of sway in Iraq, which is normal. What's silly, though, is that Americans see this as some sort of meddling, because Iranian interests in Iraq are not always the same as American interests (although I'd argue that they coincide much more often than either side would like to admit). If Iran were occupying Mexico or Canada, you can be sure that the US would be "meddling" as well.

As for the actual article, I don't really have too much to add, except that it's important to look at Iranian involvement in Iraq not as a spoiler or as some diabolical force. If the US is going to come to terms with Middle Eastern players (of which Iran has become a major one, due in no small part to American intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq), Washington is going to have to look at Teheran (and Damascus and Hezbollah and Hamas, for that matter) as actors who have interests in the region that can't be run over roughshod by America.

This is a reality. So just as when one deals with Zimbabwe, it's necessary to take Pretoria into account, or how when dealing with Burma or North Korea one can't ignore Beijing, the road to peace in Iraq must necessarily pass through Teheran, but not in the way that American hawks would like it to.

I'd like to offer a solution to the political impasse as presented by a friend of mine in Paris. I've translated it into English for the Anglophone audience, but the original can be found in the comments of the previous post:


The example of Lebanon inspires new political choices for me which consist of fighting to eliminate the presidential office. The revolution did not finish the job; it was necessary to cut off the head of the state; the only president of this country will remain a cheese.



I also think that since Lebanon can't find itself a capable man to rally all the parties behind him, it's making a recruiting error, for because this man doesn't exist, it's necessary to widen the recruitment to other species: animals, vegetables or maybe an object, a machine, something that symbolizes Lebanon, a new totem.

The list is long. What do you think about an octopus, a cedar, a Mercedes, a 4x4, a fork, a chick pea or a lubbia?

I know that N has a preference for donkeys, and maybe that isn't such a bad idea. It's a hardy animal that can carry heavy loads upon its shoulders without ever complaining.

I think you guys need a donkey. It's a noble animal that we must reclaim. Furthermore, that would allow the beginning of a new collection of stickers for parties and colors. I'll trade you my Hezbollah donkey for your Lebanese Forces carrot.

I don't know if my modest contribution will allow the country to get out of this crisis, but if you think it's useful, spread the word, because we never know, the world's going crazy, so let's take it at its word and enjoy it.

The conservative blogosphere is full of armchair quarterbacks and Middle East "experts" (see comments) who are fond of telling us about Arab propaganda and accusing the "MSM" of toeing the "terrorist" line. So from time to time, it's a good idea to drop in on the Israeli side of the beat:

Today's memo from the Israel Defense Forces censorship office:

1. Real-time reports on the exact locations of rocket hits are strictly prohibited. Reports, on delayed-time, of exact locations must always be approved by the IDF Censor.

2. The IDF Censor will not authorize reports of rocket hits at IDF bases and/or strategic installations.

3. The IDF Censor will not authorize reporting on rockets that fell into the Mediterranean Sea.

4. The IDF Censor will not authorize photographs of rockets with identifying marks.

5. The IDF Censor will not authorize reports regarding visits by senior Israel Government officials and IDF officer in southern Israel.

6. The IDF Censor will not authorize information on exploded terrorist ordinance or any other malfunctioning ordinance.

7. Panoramic, wide-angle, etc. photographs of rocket hits are strictly prohibited.

Please ensure that all staff members are aware of the foregoing.

The foregoing does not obviate the obligation to submit to the IDF Censor – prior to publication – of any news item regarding rocket hits or any other subject that must be approved by the IDF Censor.

When complaining about a militant guerilla organization's restrictions on reporting, I think it's only fair to recall that the other side actually has a censorship office.

Sometimes I forget that I live by the sea. It's easy enough to do, what with Beirut traffic, honking horns and the city's urban brown and grey. Usually, I'm reminded by a glimpse of the Mediterranean from Ras Beirut, which sometimes prompts me to take a stroll on the corniche to smell the water.

Today, however, I was reminded by a taxi driver talking about the USS Cole, the US carrier that was attacked in Yemen and has now been deployed off the coast of Lebanon. No one I talked to today thought that the ship would actually do anything. Everyone seemed to agree that it was just a show of force by the US.

One Hezbollah partisan from Saida told me that if there were a war and the USS Cole was involved, it would be sunk. Then again, he also told me that he thought the Party of God would not only defeat Israel again this summer but also destroy the Jewish state. (I had to stop myself from laughing when he spoke of Hezbollah's 1 million troops, which would make up one in every four Lebanese citizens.)

In any case, no one seemed excited about the ship's presence in the area. A colleague of mine, an American-Lebanese Christian mother of four who supports March 14, also told me that she thought it was a bad idea.

At the end of the day, I think we've already got enough saber rattling here, and adding the noise of an additional and enormous American saber to the mix is probably the last thing we need here. Ironically, however, the US Navy's stated rationale for the deployment is stability. 

Hassan Nasrallah spoke this week, making this disconcerting remark:

I tell the shallow minds in Lebanon, who speak about war and peace decisions, that Israel is the only side that has been taking the decision of war or peace. The decision that we take is our legitimate, moral, humane and natural right in order to defend our people, land and country at a time of negligence by the government and the world.

While this is true to a limited extent, there are times when it takes two to tango, and now is one of those times. We know that the assassination of Mughniyeh was an escalation in the region, but we also know that there's a very high chance that if/when Hezbollah retaliates against Israel, Israel will attack Lebanon again.

Many Hezbollah partisans argue that it's their "right" to retaliate and generally agree that Israel would react to an assassinated ambassador, for example, with an attack on Lebanon. They have a tougher time, however, answering my question as to whether or not exercising their "right" to retaliate is worth plunging the country into another war.

Likewise, when I ask whether the rest of the country (as opposed to just the cadres of Hezbollah) ought not have a say in such a decision, these partisans generally insist (with an obstinate attitude that certainly is representative of Lebanese politics) that they do represent the whole country.

During the July war, one could still plausibly say that the brutal Israeli reaction was unexpected. In 2008, however, almost no one seems to doubt what the consequences of retaliation against Israel would mean for Lebanon. Regardless of whether or not another Israeli war would be legitimate, it certainly won't be unexpected. And I haven't been able to find anyone who's willing to come out and say that avenging the assassination of Mughniyeh is worth the lives of another thousand Lebanese people.

In another bid to see who can talk up Imad Mughniyeh the most as super terrorist extraordinaire (which was, until recently, mainly a contest between Hezbollah and Israel), an-Nahar's English-language site is now claiming that he was, in fact, responsible for the founding of the Mehdi Army in Iraq. While I'm no expert on the Mehdi Army, this claim seems more than a little over the top to me.

I'm just waiting to hear the news that Mughniyeh was also responsible for Pearl Harbor and all those bombings in Corsica and Spanish Basque country.

For a much more sober, and informed, view of the situation, I recommend this Newshour interview with Mohamad Bazzi and Robert Baer.

I've been missing in action for a while, even after my trip to Ethiopia, which I'll have a lot more on later.

Since I've been back, however, a lot has happened. Imad Mughniya was killed in a car bomb in Damascus (shortly after Michael Totten said I was one of the "notorious leftists who endlessly excuses Hezbollah" and accused me of spreading propaganda when I mentioned that car bombs were used by the American side as well in the comments here). Yesterday was the third anniversary of Hariri's assassination. And finally, there was just a small earthquake (more of a tremor, really) here in Beirut.

I don't have much to say about the first topic, but I will say that I always feel uncomfortable with any kind of extra-judicial killing and assassination, no matter whom it's done by. Also, this seems to be either a very serious breach of Syrian security or evidence that Damascus gave the Israelis or Americans the ok to carry out the attack as part of a larger deal. In any case, it signals an escalation between Hezbollah and Israel, so it wouldn't surprise me if there's an external (outside of Lebanon and Israel) attack against Israeli (or even American) interests. After all, the 1992 Israeli embassy bombing in Argentina was retaliation for the assassination of Hezbollah Secretary General Abbas al-Musawi, who was replaced by Nasrallah. Such escalation is always a bad thing for all parties involved.

As for the February 14 event, I went downtown to give it a look as Geagea was speaking, and it wasn't too big, although I didn't show up until about noon. One big reason for this was that it was rainy and cold. I was a bit worried about clashes arising last night between mourners of Hariri and Mughniya, but the cold rain was probably a blessing in disguise in that it's hard to get riled up to go out looking for trouble when you're soaking wet.

Finally, the earthquake: I didn't feel it, but I heard a rumble. All of my colleagues seem to have felt it, which might just mean that I'm insensitive, so to speak.

It's just occurred to me that there aren't very many places in the world where I could post about an earthquake, a car bomb and a protest against an assassination in the same piece. How's that for potpourri, Alex Trebek?

Back July 2006, Israel was "just defending itself" while laying waste to Lebanon after the capture of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah. However Israel is mystified when two rockets are fired from the South of Lebanon into Israeli territory this week. To hear Haaretz tell it, those rockets just came out of the blue for no good reason:

Earlier Tuesday, Israel filed a severe complaint with the United Nations Security Council and with Ban over the Katyusha firing.

The rockets struck the western Galilee town of Shlomi early Tuesday morning, causing no injuries. One of the rockets lightly damaged a house, and the second hit a street in the twon. Army Radio reported that the second rocket damaged an electricity pole.

The complaint called the rocket fire a severe violation of Security Council Resolution 1701, which brought the Second Lebanon War to an end.

According to the complaint, the rocket fire was additional evidence the resolution has yet to be fully implemented and therefore there is still a threat to Israel...

In the whole article there isn't a single mention of the shepherd Fadi Ahmad Abdel Aal, who was kidnapped the day before by the IDF:

The Israeli military said it had detained a man crossing the border with Lebanon.

"During an IDF (Israeli army) activity a suspect was identified crossing the Blue Line into Israel. He was arrested inside Israel and has been taken in for questioning," an Israeli army spokeswoman said.

She declined to give the suspect's nationality but said he was not Israeli.

However, a Lebanese security source told AFP the Israeli soldiers had abducted a man they named as Fadi Ahmad Abdel Aal inside Lebanon and "brought him inside Israel with them.

"The soldiers made an incursion of 100 metres (yards) to reach agricultural land where they found the shepherd," the source said on condition of anonymity.

The UN peacekeeping force said it had been informed of the incident by the Israeli military.

"UNIFIL has been informed by the IDF that they have apprehended a Lebanese citizen and we are in contact with them in order to resolve the situation as soon as possible," UNIFIL spokeswoman Yasmina Bouziane told AFP.

Israeli forces have in the past seized Lebanese shepherds along the border and taken them for questioning over possible links with Hezbollah militants. They are usually released after questioning.

So let's just recap here: in 2006, two Israeli soldiers are captured by Hezbollah, and that warrants a month-long spasm of bombs that killed over 1,000 civilians. This week, a Lebanese shepherd is "detained" (not to say kidnapped) by the IDF, and when two rockets are fired into Israel resulting in no casualties, this is "evidence" that "there is still a threat to Israel."

When it comes to Israel, what's good for the goose, it seems, is not good for the gander.

I generally try to stay away from the National Review. This explains why I didn't see the inane and meretricious "reporting" done by W. Thomas Smith Jr. until today. I've commented here before on ridiculous and sensationalist accounts of Lebanon, but this guy really takes the cake. Smith wrote last September:

Hezbollah is rehearsing for something big here. Not sure what or when. But a few days ago, between 4,000 and 5,000 HezB gunmen deployed to the Christian areas of Beirut in an unsettling “show of force,” positioning themselves at road intersections and other key points throughout the city.

It just so happens that I live on the East side of town in one of the "Christian areas of Beirut," and I can guarantee that Smith's account is laughably untrue. On the day that Smith says Hezbollah "deployed" to East Beirut, I was doing some shopping. I live on the border of Gemmayzeh and Mar Mkhail and went to Sassine and ABC that day (all of which are Christian neighborhoods), and rest assured, there were no Hezbollah militants, much less armed ones, to be seen anywhere.  Had what he described been true, there would most likely have been a civil war, or at the very least isolated street fighting. As it was, not only was there no fighting, but not a single journalist in Beirut, foreign or Lebanese, picked up on Hezbollah's alleged "show of force." There's a very simple reason for this: it never happened. If Hezbollah were to deploy a dozen armed militants to Achrafieh, that would be crossing one of Lebanon's red lines. Saying that there were 4,000-5,000 gunmen here is beyond farfetched; it's in the realm of the outlandishly comic. 

I've had neither the time, nor the stomach, to wade through all of this guy's Lebanon "coverage," but the few pieces I've opened are risible in their ridiculousness. Here's another example:

Hezbollah are not the only terrorists operating here in Lebanon: There are also Al Qaeda affiliates like Fatah Al Islam (they were not totally wiped out at Nahr al Bared), as well as Jund al Sham (Soldiers of Damascus), Jundallah, Hamas, and — though few Americans are aware of this — operating elements of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps on the Lebanese side of the Lebanese-Syrian border. These are just a few of the problem groups here: All operating under the auspices of Hezbollah.

Despite his mistranslation of "Sham," which in this context means Greater Syria (Syria, Lebanon and Palestine) and not Damascus, this little excerpt is absurd in that it explicitly says that all of the al-Qaeda-affiliated groups operating in the Palestinian camps, as well as Hamas and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard are "operating under the auspices of Hezbollah." First of all, no one knows who is connected to the various groups operating in the Palestinian camps. And second of all, anyone who believes that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard is "under the auspices" of Hezbollah, and not the other way around, obviously knows nothing about either organization.

Smith's scattergun approach to various armed groups in Lebanon is symptomatic of a larger, mostly American, approach to the Middle East, where al-Qaeda equals Hezbollah equals Hamas equals al Qaeda in Iraq equals Jund al-Sham ,etc. This is the kind of thinking that led most Americans to believe that Baghdad had something to do with 9/11 and leaves the defenders of the free world (see also: Reyes and Sarkozy) incapable of distinguishing between Sunnis and Shi'a.

Another fun read is this post, in which Smith brags about doing "reconnaissance" in the Dahiye, the suburbs where Hezbollah is based in Beirut. Or rather this would be funny if it were a satire and I were reading it to friends in Beirut. This guy seems to think that he's in a Chuck Norris movie, which would be fine except for a couple of things. First, this "journalism," in which Smith writes about spying on Hezbollah for pro-Government groups not only makes him sound like a macho asshole, it also casts a shadow of doubt on legitimate journalism done by actual reporters in a country where foreign correspondents are already viewed with an air of suspicion. Second, it makes Beirut sound like a war zone, which it's clearly not.

And then there's this gem. According to Smith, there were "some 200-plus heavily armed Hezbollah militiamen — positioned between the parliament and the Serail." As it happens, I've spent a fair amount of time downtown, and this is not the first time I've written about Americans talking about the sit-in protest without knowing what they're talking about. For the last few months, it's been hard to find more than a couple of dozen people at the protest, much less hundreds of armed militants. I have never, I repeat: never, seen any Hezbollah weapons downtown. They may have them down there, but if they do, they're hidden so well that someone who regularly strolls through the camp would not see them. To suggest that he surprised 200 armed militants out in the open while driving over the bridge that connects East and West Beirut is ridiculous.   

Finally, Jack Bauer -- I mean W. Thomas Smith Jr. -- gives us a post from an "undisclosed neighborhood":

Lebanon is extremely dangerous for Americans right now. In fact, some top officials within the 1559 Committee (essentially the heart and soul of the Cedars Revolution ... for a free Lebanon) believe some sort of dramatic terrorist event is going to take place here in Lebanon between now and mid-October. This is not a gut feeling, but a calculation based on intelligence analysis and chatter from the street.

Tony Nissi, the 1559 Committee chief here in Beirut (whom you'll recall from previous entries), has reason to believe Hezbollah knows who I am. So I am deliberately not staying in hotels: Instead, I'm spending nights in friends' houses — safe houses if you will — and always with bodyguards.

This one is the funniest of the bunch. If there are only half of the number of Americans in Lebanon now as there were during the July war, there'd still be over 10,000 Americans here, myself included. Beirut is decidedly not unsafe for Americans, unless of course they decide to go play G.I. Joe by arming themselves and doing "reconnaissance." But even if Smith were to get picked up by Hezbollah or the Army for spying (which is basically what he claims he's doing), they'd immediately recognize him for the  buffoon that he plainly is. He sounds more like a hapless character out of a Harry Mathews novel than an actual spy, or, God forbid, a journalist.

I could go on for pages about the factual inaccuracy of Smith's reports, but it would just be more of the same. It's amazing to me that NRO published any of Smith's "reports." They are so obviously bullshit that someone must have been asleep at the wheel over there. One of my pet peeves is the writing of partisan hacks who only travel for rhetorical flair, and Smith seems to be more of the same. The difference is that his case is so egregious that he's getting called out on it. There are well respected journalists here in Lebanon and elsewhere who not only know the country intimately but are good writers to boot. Anthony Shadid, Annia Ciezadlo and Mohamad Bazzi are only a few of the names that come to mind. So why is there a need to send Chuck Norris wannabe hacks like Smith who evidently don't know anything about the countries they're ostensibly covering? If NRO wants coverage of Lebanon, there's no dearth of talent already here in Beirut. Insisting on publishing Smith's fabrications in order to toe an ideological line that pays no heed of Lebanon's complex politics only makes NRO look stupid and dishonest.

If you're interested in NRO's response to similar allegations, you can see that here and here.

UPDATE: Kathryn Jean Lopez, online editor of the National Review has another statement up about Smith (emphasis mine):

With regard to the two posts in question, it is my belief, based on an investigation in which NRO discussed the matter with three independent sources who live and work in Lebanon (as well as other experts in the area), that Smith was probably either spun by his sources or confused about what he saw.

...the context that Smith was operating in an uncertain environment where he couldn't always be sure of what he was witnessing, and the caveats that he filled in the gaps by talking to sources within the Cedar Revolution movement and the Lebanese national-security apparatus, whose claims obviously should have been been treated with the same degree of skepticism as those of anyone with an agenda to advance.

As one of our sources put it: "The Arab tendency to lie and exaggerate about enemies is alive and well among pro-American Lebanese Christians as much as it is with the likes of Hamas." While Smith vouches for his sources, we cannot independently verify what they told him. That's why we're revisiting the posts in question and warning readers to take them with a grain of salt.

So let me get this straight. Lopez publishes Smith's ridiculous posts that betray a fundamental ignorance of Lebanon and the political situation here, posts which were either made up entirely or fed to him by pro-Government forces, and the problem here is the "Arab tendency to lie and exaggerate."

Wow. I almost don't even know where to start with this one. Maybe she should just throw in another couple of lines about America's mission civilisatrice and the white man's burden and be done with it.

In any case, someone should send her message to Tom Harb, a rabid March 14 supporter in the US, who's supporting Smith wholeheartedly (from Florida, no less) and accusing all of the journalists who have contradicted Smith of being on the Hezbollah payroll. Someone should remind him that his neo-conservative comrades in arms at NRO and elsewhere are fair weather friends to whom, at the end of the day, a wog is a wog, regardless of his political usefulness.

I spent this past weekend in the Chouf mountain, otherwise known as the personal fiefdom of Walid Jumblatt. I was looking forward to visiting the Moukhtara and its beautiful castle, and given the tense situation, I was surprised when my friend told me that conforming to Druze tradition, I could go have tea with and briefly meet Jumblatt -- or even ask him for something. Saturday morning is the time when the Moukhtara is open, and all are given tea while they wait for an audience with Walid Bek.

My timing was off, though, because it seems that US ambassador to Lebanon, Jeffrey Feltman, was due to arrive shortly for a lunch with Jumblatt and no amount of wasta with Jumblatt's private security detail was going to get us in.

One thing that bothers me about Lebanon is the checkpoints. They're a hassle, but given the situation, they seem necessary. What really gets to me though are those run by militias. Any journalist covering the south or Bekaa, or even parts of the Dahiye, are familiar with Hezbollah's stops, although I've never personally had to show my ID to anyone from Hezbollah, and despite my frequent trips to and through the sit-in downtown, I've never seen a member of the party armed.

Now March 14 and its allies are fond of complaining about the "state within a state" that is Hezbollah, but what you hear less about are their own states within a state. (Incidentally, I'm not fond of the expression, because in order for it to be true, there'd have to be a state within which to have a state -- something that just isn't true here.) While there are army checkpoints all around the Moukhtara, the guys with machine guns at the gate are PSP militia. They've got neither badge nor uniform -- their gun and the confidence of Walid being their only license for checking my ID. But these are the higher ranked guards, down the street, working at the local mechanic and sitting in a little booth are kids with walkie talkies.

When we decided to take a walk around the Moukhtara, we were immediately stopped by a kid who couldn't have been over 20 years old. I think he was intimidated by us, so when we refused to show any ID and only gave our first names, he called someone else as we were walking away. The second guy was only a little older and looked like he should be working second spatula at a saj stand. But there he was, asking for our ID. My friend looked him in the eye, immediately getting angry, and asked him where his ID was. After some prompting, the young and round boy opened his wallet and flashed a normal ID without letting us take it out or look at it too long. When we asked what gave him the authority to stop us, he lifted his shirt and showed us his walkie talkie. The Chouf, it seems, isn't so different from the south after all.

The rest of my trip, barring an embarrassing run-in with the way-too-friendly (and touchy!) tour guide at Beiteddine, was a welcome change from the city. Like true mountain men, we ate heartily and shot guns, and the clean air cleared my persistent cold right up.

Also, the Cedar reserve reminded me of something out of a fairy tale:

Thanks to those who have sent messages wondering if I was all right and where I was. I took a trip up to the Chouf on Tuesday and spent the night in a village in the mountain. I visited some of the Druze shebab to see how things were and how they were feeling after their unexpected victory over Hezbollah in Barouk.

When I got back to Beirut, what I thought was just a long electricity cut turned out to be several days without power (that's getting fixed while I type, insh'allah). So I've been out of the loop, news and otherwise, and will need some time to wrap my head around things before posting any comments about the situation.

There's also the fact that during the last week, I've not really wanted to do much except sleep. As a result, I didn't get any work done and am now swamped with things that have been left undone up to now.

This seems to be shaping up to be a full-scale coup d'état by Hezbollah with the support of the army. It looks like they're going piece by piece. Future was first, now the PSP is being taken in the Chouf, and I imagine the Lebanese Forces in the Christian sectors will be next.

The rest of the Lebanese parties were no match for Hezbollah, but when you throw in the army, what can you expect? Hariri and Joumblatt seem to have agreed not to fight, probably to save the bloodshed that would not have stopped the coup in any case. So they've agreed to go quietly in exchange for there not being a battle to which Future and PSP partisans would have gone like lambs to the slaughter.

The army seems to have cut a deal with Hezbollah, but it's hard to say what they could have done in any case, since they're so much weaker than the Party of God. So the current government will most likely be forced to resign, Suleiman will be appointed as president, and someone pliable will be appointed to be Prime Minister. Things will be like before 2005, except that instead of taking marching orders from Damascus, the new government will answer to Harat Hreik.

Yesterday, I spent a good part of the day in Hamra, where SSNP thugs were still armed and around. They broke up a group of unarmed neighborhood residents (most of whom were with Future) by shooting in the air and shouting. The night before a 16-year-old boy had been killed while delivering a narguileh for the shop he worked for. When they finally had a hard time getting the group of the boy's friends, family and neighbors to go inside despite plenty of shooting, they left. Shortly afterward, the Army finally showed up. The SSNP gunmen were going around Hamra without any challenge from the Army.

Today, things seem to be much better in West Beirut (although I haven't been there today), but fighting has spread all over the country, with Hezbollah apparently shelling a Druze village and opposition Druze forces fighting the PSP in Aley. Clashes are also going on in in Shweifat.

Add this to the fighting in Tripoli, and the death toll is nearly 40 now. In the words of Yeats:

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Another thing that's been bothering me is the fact that Mostaqbal's media outlets were shut down. I won't pretend that part of me doesn't feel a little tinge of delight at the idea of the Mostaqbal thugs getting some comeuppance. But punishing neighborhood thugs who fancy themselves militiamen is one thing, while shutting down media outlets is another. During the 2006 war, Hezbollah was (rightfully, to my mind) outraged by Israel's targeting of their television station, al-Manar. So why is it acceptable to have shut down Future TV?

I'm watching Kalam an-Nass right now, while the head of Future TV is being interviewed. According to him, a Lebanese soldier, in uniform, told them that they had to open the gates or else they'd be killed by Hezbollah militiamen. This is, of course, disconcerting on several levels. First of all, this would mean that a member of the ostensibly neutral Lebanese Army would have helped Hezbollah shut down the media outlet of a competing political party. But regardless of whether or not a soldier helped Hezbollah shut the station down, the latter certainly did disconnect Future TV. This is scandalous, and Hezbollah should be ashamed of itself.

A woman presenter, whose name I can't recall, just came on and gave Hezbollah a piece of her mind. She said that she's spent the last year and a half doing reports on the lot of the people of the south and how they've suffered during the war of 2006 and after. Then she explained how al-Manar reported that the staff of Future TV "fled" the premises, like thieves or criminals, when in fact they were told to leave if they didn't want to die. She said that forgetting the parties and forgetting politics, this kind of treatment and the occupation of Beirut has made regular people, people like her, hate Hezbollah. She said that after people like her who did their best to take in refugees after the war in 2006 are treated like this and accused of being traitors, Hezbollah should be ashamed of itself. Of course a presenter on Future TV isn't exactly representative of the man on the street, but her point is well taken.

I can say, however, that the opposition has lost the sympathy of people who have supported the principles of the resistance, even if they had really ambivalent feelings about the religious and authoritarian form it's taken. And the traitor rhetoric is really hurtful and disgusting to people who support resistance against Israel but don't want to live in a country where the interests of the resistance trump those of the state. Calling people traitors like this smacks of Bush's rhetoric in the "war on terror," where you're either "with us or against us," and doesn't sit well with many Lebanese.

I never thought I'd say this, but there was part of Samir Geagea's speech this afternoon that I agree with. He said that the use of Hezbollah's weapons has delegitimized their very existence. I tend to agree with this idea, because Hezbollah has decided to use its weapons in an internal dispute between Lebanese actors. (Here, it's important to remember that the myth that Hezbollah has never been part of inter-Lebanese fighting fails to include when Amal and Hezbollah fought each the during the civil war.) What has happened is that the March 14 government made a decision that Hezbollah disagreed with, and in reaction to this, they took up arms and occupied half of Beirut. This means that the weapons whose sole purpose is supposed to deter Israeli aggression and defend Lebanon has been used as a blunt political tool to try to force the government to resign, or at the very least, send it a far-from-subtle message. 

The line being taken by the opposition now (at least as far as the talking heads of al-Manar are concerned) is that Hezbollah has helped the state put down militias (namely Mustaqbal, or the Future movement). This position fails to take into consideration, for example, the fact that there are still armed militia members of Amal and the Syrian Social Nationalist Party walking around West Beirut.

Either armed militias are illegal or they aren't. What's happened is that the Army seems to have passively taken the side of Hezbollah, which means that their legitimacy will be decreased or destroyed in the eyes of other Lebanese communities, especially the Sunnis in Saida and Tripoli. It has also sent the message that the most effective political tool is military force. I imagine, then, that the Sunnis in Saida and Tripoli, the pro-government Christians and the Druze loyal to Walid Jumblatt have likely decided that they can no longer count on the Army to be an impartial arbiter for the state. This will surely lead to increased militia training and arming. It wouldn't surprise me if the lesson that the Lebanese Forces and the PSP have taken from the defeat of Mustaqbal (probably the weakest of the pro-government parties/militias, if one of the nastier ones on a local neighborhood level) is that they should be prepared for more of the same in the not-so-distant future.

So where does this leave us? Despite rumors earlier today, it doesn't look like Saniora, or anyone else, will resign from the government. So what? There's still no president, and the fundamental dysfunction of the Lebanese state has only been highlighted, not solved. If this all ends with Hezbollah and its allied militias pulling back to their territory in the next day or so, leaving a humiliating message for the other parties and their militias, we'll be back to where we started. Back to where we started, except a big part of the population will have lost faith in the idea that Hezbollah and its allies can be dealt with within the norms of a democratic system.

Since there is no way that any of these groups can compete with Hezbollah's military forces, look for them to embrace proxies. This might include the Sunnis accepting al-Qaeda militants and other groups hoping for more Israeli intervention. I'm sure that after the disaster that was the war in 2006, the Israeli establishment wouldn't mind taking advantage of the situation for  rematch. In any case, what this situation hasn't done is foster an atmosphere where either side feels like it can compromise. If anything, this whole situation has pushed March 14 further into its corner and inflated the arrogance and confidence of Hezbollah and its allies in the country and abroad. Neither of which bodes well for peace or stability in Lebanon.

Amin Gemayel, whom I can't stand, called Hezbollah's victory a Pyrrhic one (actually, he said it in French, the snooty bastard). I tend to think that, on a national level and in the long term, he's probably right. In any case, it's enough to turn some Lebanese into bitter Mercutios.

The rumor I've been hearing now, to the glee of some Aounist Christians in my neighborhood, is that Prime Minister Saniora has resigned. I can't confirm this, but it really begs the question of what he would resign from. Premiership of what? There is no government. The military is sitting around doing absolutely nothing, which may be best for the lives of the soldiers but is disastrous for the life of the state. I walked down to the eastern side of the bridge that connects east and west Beirut, and it was being guarded by a couple of tanks and APCs and some soldiers. The latter were sitting around shooting the shit and listening to the radio. One was sleeping in the shadow of his APC. I've also seen it reported that Jumblatt was forced to flee his home in Clemenceau under the protection of the Army.

Despite the fact that the army is much weaker than Hezbollah and would have lost any real shooting match, I keep wondering to myself if one of the reasons the Army is staying out is because of the head of the Army, Michel Suleiman. He had been put forward as a compromise candidate for president. Now that Hezbollah is calling the shots, it will be interesting to see who they put forward as the president, or if they appoint anyone at all.

It obviously won't be Aoun, which means that he's pretty much outlived his usefulness to the opposition cum ruling party, due to the fact that he was only helpful to them so long as they were working within the system. Now that they have taken matters into their own hands, they really don't need him anymore. I don't think that Hezbollah would even try to put someone Franjieh into the presidential palace, so that pretty much only leaves Suleiman. Maybe he cut a deal with Hezbollah to stay out of the fighting in exchange for the presidency.

But even the question of who will be the president may be putting the cart before the horse. It isn't clear at all now what Hezbollah will do. Will there be a fight between the pro-Government Christian militias (Lebanese Forces and Phalangists) and Hezbollah? Will Hezbollah install a new government of its choosing based on the old system? Will they install a government composed purely of Hezbollah members? Will they call for new elections? Your guess is as good as mine.

What's sure though, is this: those who may have have been somewhat sympathetic to the underlying principles of "the Resistance" and Hezbollah's part in that movement despite (being uncomfortable with the idea of an explicitly religious party) are likely to be turned off by the last few days' events. The chorus has always been the Hezbollah would never turn its weapons inward, but it has done that now. At the end of the day, Hezbollah went outside of the rules of the game. That game may have been frustrating and often paralyzing, but at least it was nominally democratic. Now, even if they call for new elections, Hezbollah has broken the rules of the game by resorting to violence to achieve a political goal. A lot of people won't forgive or forget this, and there will be even more people who will never be able to trust the party of God to follow the rules of the (at least nominally) democratic system, because they have, for all intents and purposes, overthrown the government by force.

UPDATE: I just saw Aoun on television assuring viewers that no one would be persecuted. Maybe he didn't get the memo, but Hezbollah seized power without him or his help. He looks more like a remora sucking with all his might to be pulled along with Hezbollah, feasting on what's left of the already feeble Lebanese state.

The war is continuing, but my neighborhood looks like it's any other Saturday morning. The upscale carft shop, L'Artisan du Liban, is apparently open; there is a couple walking a dog; traffic is coming through; and Ethiopian maids are beating carpets and washing windows.

Meanwhile, in Hamra, Hezbollah took all of one night to defeat the Mostaqbal (Future, the pro-government Sunni militia) and take over the area. There are now (much more professional) Hezbollah militiamen running the areas. The Future movement's television channel was shut down, along with its newspaper and radio station. According to my friends, the army and Internal Security Forces (the latter trained by the US and loyal to Future's Hariri) are nowhere to be found.

There had been rumors about Mustaqbal training in the last year or two. I suppose we can put that notion to rest, because it only took a night for them to get their asses handed to them by Hezbollah.

So what now? Jumblatt made this point yesterday, saying that Hezbollah could easily occupy all of Beirut, but then what? I'm wondering what's going to happen to East Beirut. Are the Christians going to (or going to be allowed to) stay out of it all together? Will Hezbollah wait until Mustaqbal has been completely routed and then aim their sites at Christian Lebanese Forces and Phalangists? Will Hezbollah use its new-found posiiton of power to negotiate, or will it just be the government now?

For the moment, I can't tell that we're in a civil war by looking out the window, but had I left work an hour later yesterday, I'd probably be holed up in my office or at friends' watching street fighting all across the neighborhood that has traditionally been the safest place in Beirut.  

UPDATE: Artisan du Liban isn't actually open, but the building it's in is. Besides grocery stores, though, the Mana'eesh places are open, as are the hair salon, antique shop and carpet repair shop by my place. 

Also, it's been pointed out to me that it's Friday today, which goes to show you how much it feels like a Saturday today here.

The garbage men stop coming:

The 8 o'clock news is presented in a flack jacket:

I don't have a picture for this one, but another way you might know that you're in a civil war if there's no more bread at your local stores...

I'm watching Hassan Nasrallah's speech right now on television, and it's very contradictory. One moment he says that this is war and that the government's decision to get rid of their man at the airport and to declare the Party of God's newly discovered independent telecommunications network illegal was a declaration of war. He says that Hezbollah's weapons will never be turned inward, but then he says that he will cut that hand off that tries to touch those weapons. (Here it's important to remember that the telecommunication network has been newly classified as a resistance weapon.) I never thought I'd say this, but Nasrallah kind of reminded me of Rumsfeld today.

Sometimes I wonder if in 1975, people knew that they were in a civil war. I have a feeling that long after the day that we now recognize as the start of the war, many people didn't know they were in one. Everyone's talking about whether or not this means war. Somehow I've got the feeling that we're already in a civil war, but we just haven't realized it yet.

UPDATE: There's something decidedly disconcerting about hearing the RPG explode in the distance right before you hear it on the television. MY neighborhood is calm right now; the opposing Christian factions have so far kept their distance from the fighting, but I can hear automatic gun fire and RPGs in the distance. 1840, 1958, 1975, 2008? Plus ça change...

Raymond Tanter from WINEP and MESH has a post up about why the Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK), the Iranian militants who have committed terrorist attacks against the regime in Teheran and who were hosted by Saddam's Iraq, should be delisted from the State Department's list of terrorist organizations. Besides the fact that the MEK is against the Iranian regime, basically, his argument boils down to the fact that they haven't committed any acts of terrorism for a few years:

On April 25, Patrick Clawson, deputy director of research at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, wrote that designation “should be based only on terrorism issues,” and that State “cited no alleged MEK terrorist activity since 2001, yet have increased allegations pertaining [to] the group’s non-terrorist activities.” Country Reports 2007 continues this trend of making allegations that are irrelevant to terrorist designation.

Tanter attempts to argue that MEK doesn't have the capability to carry out terrorist attacks, whereas we all know that anyone with a back pack, a bus pass and household peroxide can commit an act of terrorism. So while this argument isn't very convincing, he tells us, "de-listing would provide diplomatic leverage over Tehran, as the West is presently failing to constrain the Iranian regime’s nuclear program, sponsorship of terrorism, and subversion of Iraq."

In other words, the US should use a terrorist group for political bargaining. Of course this is nothing new: the Bush family has a long history of using Cuban terrorists to apply pressure on the Castro regime. What's striking, though, is the moral indignation Republicans muster when someone supports talking to groups like Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood and Hezbollah (most of the violence committed by the last group having been aimed at military targets). Charges of moral equivalency and weak knees in the face of terror are immediately brandished.

Well, Orlando Bosch blew up a passenger plane killing all 73 civilians aboard. Jose Dionisio Suarez and Virgilio Paz Romero assassinated the Chilean diplomat Orlando Letelier in Washington. The Mujahedeen-e Khalq assassinated the deputy chief of the Iranian Armed Forces General Staff, Brigadier General Ali Sayyaad Shirazi and attacked Iranian embassies and installations in 13 different countries at the same time. They also bombed the head office of the Islamic Republic Party and the Prime Minister's office killing 70 people, including the Chief Justice, the President and the Prime Minister.

Either terrorism is an acceptable tactic, or it's not. Washington can't understand why the rest of the world sees America as hypocritical, but Tanter's desire for the US to have its cake and eat it too should give us a hunch. 

UPDATE: Thinking more about this today has reminded me of the question of when a group can legitimately be de-listed as a terrorist organization. If the fact that MEK hasn't committed any acts of terrorism since 2001 is really enough to prove that they've mended their ways, then the same ought to apply to Hezbollah as well, because depending on who was responsible for the Argentinean attacks and the kidnapping of Tannenbaum, they haven't committed any acts of terrorism since 2000, the mid-1990s or even the late 1980s.

Otherwise, supporting terrorist groups or rebels or militias in a neighboring country has long been a staple of statecraft. In Africa, Sudan, Chad, Ethiopia, Uganda and Eritrea each support groups in their neighbors' territory. Iran and Syria support Hamas and Hezbollah; Syria supported the PLO in Jordan; while Israel supported the SLA in Lebanon; and Iran trained the Iraqi Badr Brigage to fight against Saddam. Hell, the first car bomb in Iraq wasn't unleashed by Zarqawi, but rather by Iyad Allawi with the help of the CIA. So while I abhor the use of violence against civilians as a political tool, I'm not naive and do know it happens all over. It's the smug hypocrisy of the "War on Terror" that really gets my goat in the same way that the "Fair and Balanced" slogan annoys me way more than the actual Fox News coverage.

McClatchy has an interesting piece on Iranian Brig. Gen. Qassem Suleimani, the head of the Revolutionary Guard's Quds Force. The story includes an awfully high percentage of anonymous sources, and the title might be a little hyperbolic, but I think the overall points made are fair enough.

Iran has a lot of sway in Iraq, which is normal. What's silly, though, is that Americans see this as some sort of meddling, because Iranian interests in Iraq are not always the same as American interests (although I'd argue that they coincide much more often than either side would like to admit). If Iran were occupying Mexico or Canada, you can be sure that the US would be "meddling" as well.

As for the actual article, I don't really have too much to add, except that it's important to look at Iranian involvement in Iraq not as a spoiler or as some diabolical force. If the US is going to come to terms with Middle Eastern players (of which Iran has become a major one, due in no small part to American intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq), Washington is going to have to look at Teheran (and Damascus and Hezbollah and Hamas, for that matter) as actors who have interests in the region that can't be run over roughshod by America.

This is a reality. So just as when one deals with Zimbabwe, it's necessary to take Pretoria into account, or how when dealing with Burma or North Korea one can't ignore Beijing, the road to peace in Iraq must necessarily pass through Teheran, but not in the way that American hawks would like it to.

I'd like to offer a solution to the political impasse as presented by a friend of mine in Paris. I've translated it into English for the Anglophone audience, but the original can be found in the comments of the previous post:


The example of Lebanon inspires new political choices for me which consist of fighting to eliminate the presidential office. The revolution did not finish the job; it was necessary to cut off the head of the state; the only president of this country will remain a cheese.



I also think that since Lebanon can't find itself a capable man to rally all the parties behind him, it's making a recruiting error, for because this man doesn't exist, it's necessary to widen the recruitment to other species: animals, vegetables or maybe an object, a machine, something that symbolizes Lebanon, a new totem.

The list is long. What do you think about an octopus, a cedar, a Mercedes, a 4x4, a fork, a chick pea or a lubbia?

I know that N has a preference for donkeys, and maybe that isn't such a bad idea. It's a hardy animal that can carry heavy loads upon its shoulders without ever complaining.

I think you guys need a donkey. It's a noble animal that we must reclaim. Furthermore, that would allow the beginning of a new collection of stickers for parties and colors. I'll trade you my Hezbollah donkey for your Lebanese Forces carrot.

I don't know if my modest contribution will allow the country to get out of this crisis, but if you think it's useful, spread the word, because we never know, the world's going crazy, so let's take it at its word and enjoy it.

The conservative blogosphere is full of armchair quarterbacks and Middle East "experts" (see comments) who are fond of telling us about Arab propaganda and accusing the "MSM" of toeing the "terrorist" line. So from time to time, it's a good idea to drop in on the Israeli side of the beat:

Today's memo from the Israel Defense Forces censorship office:

1. Real-time reports on the exact locations of rocket hits are strictly prohibited. Reports, on delayed-time, of exact locations must always be approved by the IDF Censor.

2. The IDF Censor will not authorize reports of rocket hits at IDF bases and/or strategic installations.

3. The IDF Censor will not authorize reporting on rockets that fell into the Mediterranean Sea.

4. The IDF Censor will not authorize photographs of rockets with identifying marks.

5. The IDF Censor will not authorize reports regarding visits by senior Israel Government officials and IDF officer in southern Israel.

6. The IDF Censor will not authorize information on exploded terrorist ordinance or any other malfunctioning ordinance.

7. Panoramic, wide-angle, etc. photographs of rocket hits are strictly prohibited.

Please ensure that all staff members are aware of the foregoing.

The foregoing does not obviate the obligation to submit to the IDF Censor – prior to publication – of any news item regarding rocket hits or any other subject that must be approved by the IDF Censor.

When complaining about a militant guerilla organization's restrictions on reporting, I think it's only fair to recall that the other side actually has a censorship office.

Sometimes I forget that I live by the sea. It's easy enough to do, what with Beirut traffic, honking horns and the city's urban brown and grey. Usually, I'm reminded by a glimpse of the Mediterranean from Ras Beirut, which sometimes prompts me to take a stroll on the corniche to smell the water.

Today, however, I was reminded by a taxi driver talking about the USS Cole, the US carrier that was attacked in Yemen and has now been deployed off the coast of Lebanon. No one I talked to today thought that the ship would actually do anything. Everyone seemed to agree that it was just a show of force by the US.

One Hezbollah partisan from Saida told me that if there were a war and the USS Cole was involved, it would be sunk. Then again, he also told me that he thought the Party of God would not only defeat Israel again this summer but also destroy the Jewish state. (I had to stop myself from laughing when he spoke of Hezbollah's 1 million troops, which would make up one in every four Lebanese citizens.)

In any case, no one seemed excited about the ship's presence in the area. A colleague of mine, an American-Lebanese Christian mother of four who supports March 14, also told me that she thought it was a bad idea.

At the end of the day, I think we've already got enough saber rattling here, and adding the noise of an additional and enormous American saber to the mix is probably the last thing we need here. Ironically, however, the US Navy's stated rationale for the deployment is stability. 

Hassan Nasrallah spoke this week, making this disconcerting remark:

I tell the shallow minds in Lebanon, who speak about war and peace decisions, that Israel is the only side that has been taking the decision of war or peace. The decision that we take is our legitimate, moral, humane and natural right in order to defend our people, land and country at a time of negligence by the government and the world.

While this is true to a limited extent, there are times when it takes two to tango, and now is one of those times. We know that the assassination of Mughniyeh was an escalation in the region, but we also know that there's a very high chance that if/when Hezbollah retaliates against Israel, Israel will attack Lebanon again.

Many Hezbollah partisans argue that it's their "right" to retaliate and generally agree that Israel would react to an assassinated ambassador, for example, with an attack on Lebanon. They have a tougher time, however, answering my question as to whether or not exercising their "right" to retaliate is worth plunging the country into another war.

Likewise, when I ask whether the rest of the country (as opposed to just the cadres of Hezbollah) ought not have a say in such a decision, these partisans generally insist (with an obstinate attitude that certainly is representative of Lebanese politics) that they do represent the whole country.

During the July war, one could still plausibly say that the brutal Israeli reaction was unexpected. In 2008, however, almost no one seems to doubt what the consequences of retaliation against Israel would mean for Lebanon. Regardless of whether or not another Israeli war would be legitimate, it certainly won't be unexpected. And I haven't been able to find anyone who's willing to come out and say that avenging the assassination of Mughniyeh is worth the lives of another thousand Lebanese people.

In another bid to see who can talk up Imad Mughniyeh the most as super terrorist extraordinaire (which was, until recently, mainly a contest between Hezbollah and Israel), an-Nahar's English-language site is now claiming that he was, in fact, responsible for the founding of the Mehdi Army in Iraq. While I'm no expert on the Mehdi Army, this claim seems more than a little over the top to me.

I'm just waiting to hear the news that Mughniyeh was also responsible for Pearl Harbor and all those bombings in Corsica and Spanish Basque country.

For a much more sober, and informed, view of the situation, I recommend this Newshour interview with Mohamad Bazzi and Robert Baer.

I've been missing in action for a while, even after my trip to Ethiopia, which I'll have a lot more on later.

Since I've been back, however, a lot has happened. Imad Mughniya was killed in a car bomb in Damascus (shortly after Michael Totten said I was one of the "notorious leftists who endlessly excuses Hezbollah" and accused me of spreading propaganda when I mentioned that car bombs were used by the American side as well in the comments here). Yesterday was the third anniversary of Hariri's assassination. And finally, there was just a small earthquake (more of a tremor, really) here in Beirut.

I don't have much to say about the first topic, but I will say that I always feel uncomfortable with any kind of extra-judicial killing and assassination, no matter whom it's done by. Also, this seems to be either a very serious breach of Syrian security or evidence that Damascus gave the Israelis or Americans the ok to carry out the attack as part of a larger deal. In any case, it signals an escalation between Hezbollah and Israel, so it wouldn't surprise me if there's an external (outside of Lebanon and Israel) attack against Israeli (or even American) interests. After all, the 1992 Israeli embassy bombing in Argentina was retaliation for the assassination of Hezbollah Secretary General Abbas al-Musawi, who was replaced by Nasrallah. Such escalation is always a bad thing for all parties involved.

As for the February 14 event, I went downtown to give it a look as Geagea was speaking, and it wasn't too big, although I didn't show up until about noon. One big reason for this was that it was rainy and cold. I was a bit worried about clashes arising last night between mourners of Hariri and Mughniya, but the cold rain was probably a blessing in disguise in that it's hard to get riled up to go out looking for trouble when you're soaking wet.

Finally, the earthquake: I didn't feel it, but I heard a rumble. All of my colleagues seem to have felt it, which might just mean that I'm insensitive, so to speak.

It's just occurred to me that there aren't very many places in the world where I could post about an earthquake, a car bomb and a protest against an assassination in the same piece. How's that for potpourri, Alex Trebek?

Back July 2006, Israel was "just defending itself" while laying waste to Lebanon after the capture of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah. However Israel is mystified when two rockets are fired from the South of Lebanon into Israeli territory this week. To hear Haaretz tell it, those rockets just came out of the blue for no good reason:

Earlier Tuesday, Israel filed a severe complaint with the United Nations Security Council and with Ban over the Katyusha firing.

The rockets struck the western Galilee town of Shlomi early Tuesday morning, causing no injuries. One of the rockets lightly damaged a house, and the second hit a street in the twon. Army Radio reported that the second rocket damaged an electricity pole.

The complaint called the rocket fire a severe violation of Security Council Resolution 1701, which brought the Second Lebanon War to an end.

According to the complaint, the rocket fire was additional evidence the resolution has yet to be fully implemented and therefore there is still a threat to Israel...

In the whole article there isn't a single mention of the shepherd Fadi Ahmad Abdel Aal, who was kidnapped the day before by the IDF:

The Israeli military said it had detained a man crossing the border with Lebanon.

"During an IDF (Israeli army) activity a suspect was identified crossing the Blue Line into Israel. He was arrested inside Israel and has been taken in for questioning," an Israeli army spokeswoman said.

She declined to give the suspect's nationality but said he was not Israeli.

However, a Lebanese security source told AFP the Israeli soldiers had abducted a man they named as Fadi Ahmad Abdel Aal inside Lebanon and "brought him inside Israel with them.

"The soldiers made an incursion of 100 metres (yards) to reach agricultural land where they found the shepherd," the source said on condition of anonymity.

The UN peacekeeping force said it had been informed of the incident by the Israeli military.

"UNIFIL has been informed by the IDF that they have apprehended a Lebanese citizen and we are in contact with them in order to resolve the situation as soon as possible," UNIFIL spokeswoman Yasmina Bouziane told AFP.

Israeli forces have in the past seized Lebanese shepherds along the border and taken them for questioning over possible links with Hezbollah militants. They are usually released after questioning.

So let's just recap here: in 2006, two Israeli soldiers are captured by Hezbollah, and that warrants a month-long spasm of bombs that killed over 1,000 civilians. This week, a Lebanese shepherd is "detained" (not to say kidnapped) by the IDF, and when two rockets are fired into Israel resulting in no casualties, this is "evidence" that "there is still a threat to Israel."

When it comes to Israel, what's good for the goose, it seems, is not good for the gander.

I generally try to stay away from the National Review. This explains why I didn't see the inane and meretricious "reporting" done by W. Thomas Smith Jr. until today. I've commented here before on ridiculous and sensationalist accounts of Lebanon, but this guy really takes the cake. Smith wrote last September:

Hezbollah is rehearsing for something big here. Not sure what or when. But a few days ago, between 4,000 and 5,000 HezB gunmen deployed to the Christian areas of Beirut in an unsettling “show of force,” positioning themselves at road intersections and other key points throughout the city.

It just so happens that I live on the East side of town in one of the "Christian areas of Beirut," and I can guarantee that Smith's account is laughably untrue. On the day that Smith says Hezbollah "deployed" to East Beirut, I was doing some shopping. I live on the border of Gemmayzeh and Mar Mkhail and went to Sassine and ABC that day (all of which are Christian neighborhoods), and rest assured, there were no Hezbollah militants, much less armed ones, to be seen anywhere.  Had what he described been true, there would most likely have been a civil war, or at the very least isolated street fighting. As it was, not only was there no fighting, but not a single journalist in Beirut, foreign or Lebanese, picked up on Hezbollah's alleged "show of force." There's a very simple reason for this: it never happened. If Hezbollah were to deploy a dozen armed militants to Achrafieh, that would be crossing one of Lebanon's red lines. Saying that there were 4,000-5,000 gunmen here is beyond farfetched; it's in the realm of the outlandishly comic. 

I've had neither the time, nor the stomach, to wade through all of this guy's Lebanon "coverage," but the few pieces I've opened are risible in their ridiculousness. Here's another example:

Hezbollah are not the only terrorists operating here in Lebanon: There are also Al Qaeda affiliates like Fatah Al Islam (they were not totally wiped out at Nahr al Bared), as well as Jund al Sham (Soldiers of Damascus), Jundallah, Hamas, and — though few Americans are aware of this — operating elements of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps on the Lebanese side of the Lebanese-Syrian border. These are just a few of the problem groups here: All operating under the auspices of Hezbollah.

Despite his mistranslation of "Sham," which in this context means Greater Syria (Syria, Lebanon and Palestine) and not Damascus, this little excerpt is absurd in that it explicitly says that all of the al-Qaeda-affiliated groups operating in the Palestinian camps, as well as Hamas and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard are "operating under the auspices of Hezbollah." First of all, no one knows who is connected to the various groups operating in the Palestinian camps. And second of all, anyone who believes that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard is "under the auspices" of Hezbollah, and not the other way around, obviously knows nothing about either organization.

Smith's scattergun approach to various armed groups in Lebanon is symptomatic of a larger, mostly American, approach to the Middle East, where al-Qaeda equals Hezbollah equals Hamas equals al Qaeda in Iraq equals Jund al-Sham ,etc. This is the kind of thinking that led most Americans to believe that Baghdad had something to do with 9/11 and leaves the defenders of the free world (see also: Reyes and Sarkozy) incapable of distinguishing between Sunnis and Shi'a.

Another fun read is this post, in which Smith brags about doing "reconnaissance" in the Dahiye, the suburbs where Hezbollah is based in Beirut. Or rather this would be funny if it were a satire and I were reading it to friends in Beirut. This guy seems to think that he's in a Chuck Norris movie, which would be fine except for a couple of things. First, this "journalism," in which Smith writes about spying on Hezbollah for pro-Government groups not only makes him sound like a macho asshole, it also casts a shadow of doubt on legitimate journalism done by actual reporters in a country where foreign correspondents are already viewed with an air of suspicion. Second, it makes Beirut sound like a war zone, which it's clearly not.

And then there's this gem. According to Smith, there were "some 200-plus heavily armed Hezbollah militiamen — positioned between the parliament and the Serail." As it happens, I've spent a fair amount of time downtown, and this is not the first time I've written about Americans talking about the sit-in protest without knowing what they're talking about. For the last few months, it's been hard to find more than a couple of dozen people at the protest, much less hundreds of armed militants. I have never, I repeat: never, seen any Hezbollah weapons downtown. They may have them down there, but if they do, they're hidden so well that someone who regularly strolls through the camp would not see them. To suggest that he surprised 200 armed militants out in the open while driving over the bridge that connects East and West Beirut is ridiculous.   

Finally, Jack Bauer -- I mean W. Thomas Smith Jr. -- gives us a post from an "undisclosed neighborhood":

Lebanon is extremely dangerous for Americans right now. In fact, some top officials within the 1559 Committee (essentially the heart and soul of the Cedars Revolution ... for a free Lebanon) believe some sort of dramatic terrorist event is going to take place here in Lebanon between now and mid-October. This is not a gut feeling, but a calculation based on intelligence analysis and chatter from the street.

Tony Nissi, the 1559 Committee chief here in Beirut (whom you'll recall from previous entries), has reason to believe Hezbollah knows who I am. So I am deliberately not staying in hotels: Instead, I'm spending nights in friends' houses — safe houses if you will — and always with bodyguards.

This one is the funniest of the bunch. If there are only half of the number of Americans in Lebanon now as there were during the July war, there'd still be over 10,000 Americans here, myself included. Beirut is decidedly not unsafe for Americans, unless of course they decide to go play G.I. Joe by arming themselves and doing "reconnaissance." But even if Smith were to get picked up by Hezbollah or the Army for spying (which is basically what he claims he's doing), they'd immediately recognize him for the  buffoon that he plainly is. He sounds more like a hapless character out of a Harry Mathews novel than an actual spy, or, God forbid, a journalist.

I could go on for pages about the factual inaccuracy of Smith's reports, but it would just be more of the same. It's amazing to me that NRO published any of Smith's "reports." They are so obviously bullshit that someone must have been asleep at the wheel over there. One of my pet peeves is the writing of partisan hacks who only travel for rhetorical flair, and Smith seems to be more of the same. The difference is that his case is so egregious that he's getting called out on it. There are well respected journalists here in Lebanon and elsewhere who not only know the country intimately but are good writers to boot. Anthony Shadid, Annia Ciezadlo and Mohamad Bazzi are only a few of the names that come to mind. So why is there a need to send Chuck Norris wannabe hacks like Smith who evidently don't know anything about the countries they're ostensibly covering? If NRO wants coverage of Lebanon, there's no dearth of talent already here in Beirut. Insisting on publishing Smith's fabrications in order to toe an ideological line that pays no heed of Lebanon's complex politics only makes NRO look stupid and dishonest.

If you're interested in NRO's response to similar allegations, you can see that here and here.

UPDATE: Kathryn Jean Lopez, online editor of the National Review has another statement up about Smith (emphasis mine):

With regard to the two posts in question, it is my belief, based on an investigation in which NRO discussed the matter with three independent sources who live and work in Lebanon (as well as other experts in the area), that Smith was probably either spun by his sources or confused about what he saw.

...the context that Smith was operating in an uncertain environment where he couldn't always be sure of what he was witnessing, and the caveats that he filled in the gaps by talking to sources within the Cedar Revolution movement and the Lebanese national-security apparatus, whose claims obviously should have been been treated with the same degree of skepticism as those of anyone with an agenda to advance.

As one of our sources put it: "The Arab tendency to lie and exaggerate about enemies is alive and well among pro-American Lebanese Christians as much as it is with the likes of Hamas." While Smith vouches for his sources, we cannot independently verify what they told him. That's why we're revisiting the posts in question and warning readers to take them with a grain of salt.

So let me get this straight. Lopez publishes Smith's ridiculous posts that betray a fundamental ignorance of Lebanon and the political situation here, posts which were either made up entirely or fed to him by pro-Government forces, and the problem here is the "Arab tendency to lie and exaggerate."

Wow. I almost don't even know where to start with this one. Maybe she should just throw in another couple of lines about America's mission civilisatrice and the white man's burden and be done with it.

In any case, someone should send her message to Tom Harb, a rabid March 14 supporter in the US, who's supporting Smith wholeheartedly (from Florida, no less) and accusing all of the journalists who have contradicted Smith of being on the Hezbollah payroll. Someone should remind him that his neo-conservative comrades in arms at NRO and elsewhere are fair weather friends to whom, at the end of the day, a wog is a wog, regardless of his political usefulness.

I spent this past weekend in the Chouf mountain, otherwise known as the personal fiefdom of Walid Jumblatt. I was looking forward to visiting the Moukhtara and its beautiful castle, and given the tense situation, I was surprised when my friend told me that conforming to Druze tradition, I could go have tea with and briefly meet Jumblatt -- or even ask him for something. Saturday morning is the time when the Moukhtara is open, and all are given tea while they wait for an audience with Walid Bek.

My timing was off, though, because it seems that US ambassador to Lebanon, Jeffrey Feltman, was due to arrive shortly for a lunch with Jumblatt and no amount of wasta with Jumblatt's private security detail was going to get us in.

One thing that bothers me about Lebanon is the checkpoints. They're a hassle, but given the situation, they seem necessary. What really gets to me though are those run by militias. Any journalist covering the south or Bekaa, or even parts of the Dahiye, are familiar with Hezbollah's stops, although I've never personally had to show my ID to anyone from Hezbollah, and despite my frequent trips to and through the sit-in downtown, I've never seen a member of the party armed.

Now March 14 and its allies are fond of complaining about the "state within a state" that is Hezbollah, but what you hear less about are their own states within a state. (Incidentally, I'm not fond of the expression, because in order for it to be true, there'd have to be a state within which to have a state -- something that just isn't true here.) While there are army checkpoints all around the Moukhtara, the guys with machine guns at the gate are PSP militia. They've got neither badge nor uniform -- their gun and the confidence of Walid being their only license for checking my ID. But these are the higher ranked guards, down the street, working at the local mechanic and sitting in a little booth are kids with walkie talkies.

When we decided to take a walk around the Moukhtara, we were immediately stopped by a kid who couldn't have been over 20 years old. I think he was intimidated by us, so when we refused to show any ID and only gave our first names, he called someone else as we were walking away. The second guy was only a little older and looked like he should be working second spatula at a saj stand. But there he was, asking for our ID. My friend looked him in the eye, immediately getting angry, and asked him where his ID was. After some prompting, the young and round boy opened his wallet and flashed a normal ID without letting us take it out or look at it too long. When we asked what gave him the authority to stop us, he lifted his shirt and showed us his walkie talkie. The Chouf, it seems, isn't so different from the south after all.

The rest of my trip, barring an embarrassing run-in with the way-too-friendly (and touchy!) tour guide at Beiteddine, was a welcome change from the city. Like true mountain men, we ate heartily and shot guns, and the clean air cleared my persistent cold right up.

Also, the Cedar reserve reminded me of something out of a fairy tale:

Thanks to those who have sent messages wondering if I was all right and where I was. I took a trip up to the Chouf on Tuesday and spent the night in a village in the mountain. I visited some of the Druze shebab to see how things were and how they were feeling after their unexpected victory over Hezbollah in Barouk.

When I got back to Beirut, what I thought was just a long electricity cut turned out to be several days without power (that's getting fixed while I type, insh'allah). So I've been out of the loop, news and otherwise, and will need some time to wrap my head around things before posting any comments about the situation.

There's also the fact that during the last week, I've not really wanted to do much except sleep. As a result, I didn't get any work done and am now swamped with things that have been left undone up to now.

This seems to be shaping up to be a full-scale coup d'état by Hezbollah with the support of the army. It looks like they're going piece by piece. Future was first, now the PSP is being taken in the Chouf, and I imagine the Lebanese Forces in the Christian sectors will be next.

The rest of the Lebanese parties were no match for Hezbollah, but when you throw in the army, what can you expect? Hariri and Joumblatt seem to have agreed not to fight, probably to save the bloodshed that would not have stopped the coup in any case. So they've agreed to go quietly in exchange for there not being a battle to which Future and PSP partisans would have gone like lambs to the slaughter.

The army seems to have cut a deal with Hezbollah, but it's hard to say what they could have done in any case, since they're so much weaker than the Party of God. So the current government will most likely be forced to resign, Suleiman will be appointed as president, and someone pliable will be appointed to be Prime Minister. Things will be like before 2005, except that instead of taking marching orders from Damascus, the new government will answer to Harat Hreik.

Yesterday, I spent a good part of the day in Hamra, where SSNP thugs were still armed and around. They broke up a group of unarmed neighborhood residents (most of whom were with Future) by shooting in the air and shouting. The night before a 16-year-old boy had been killed while delivering a narguileh for the shop he worked for. When they finally had a hard time getting the group of the boy's friends, family and neighbors to go inside despite plenty of shooting, they left. Shortly afterward, the Army finally showed up. The SSNP gunmen were going around Hamra without any challenge from the Army.

Today, things seem to be much better in West Beirut (although I haven't been there today), but fighting has spread all over the country, with Hezbollah apparently shelling a Druze village and opposition Druze forces fighting the PSP in Aley. Clashes are also going on in in Shweifat.

Add this to the fighting in Tripoli, and the death toll is nearly 40 now. In the words of Yeats:

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Another thing that's been bothering me is the fact that Mostaqbal's media outlets were shut down. I won't pretend that part of me doesn't feel a little tinge of delight at the idea of the Mostaqbal thugs getting some comeuppance. But punishing neighborhood thugs who fancy themselves militiamen is one thing, while shutting down media outlets is another. During the 2006 war, Hezbollah was (rightfully, to my mind) outraged by Israel's targeting of their television station, al-Manar. So why is it acceptable to have shut down Future TV?

I'm watching Kalam an-Nass right now, while the head of Future TV is being interviewed. According to him, a Lebanese soldier, in uniform, told them that they had to open the gates or else they'd be killed by Hezbollah militiamen. This is, of course, disconcerting on several levels. First of all, this would mean that a member of the ostensibly neutral Lebanese Army would have helped Hezbollah shut down the media outlet of a competing political party. But regardless of whether or not a soldier helped Hezbollah shut the station down, the latter certainly did disconnect Future TV. This is scandalous, and Hezbollah should be ashamed of itself.

A woman presenter, whose name I can't recall, just came on and gave Hezbollah a piece of her mind. She said that she's spent the last year and a half doing reports on the lot of the people of the south and how they've suffered during the war of 2006 and after. Then she explained how al-Manar reported that the staff of Future TV "fled" the premises, like thieves or criminals, when in fact they were told to leave if they didn't want to die. She said that forgetting the parties and forgetting politics, this kind of treatment and the occupation of Beirut has made regular people, people like her, hate Hezbollah. She said that after people like her who did their best to take in refugees after the war in 2006 are treated like this and accused of being traitors, Hezbollah should be ashamed of itself. Of course a presenter on Future TV isn't exactly representative of the man on the street, but her point is well taken.

I can say, however, that the opposition has lost the sympathy of people who have supported the principles of the resistance, even if they had really ambivalent feelings about the religious and authoritarian form it's taken. And the traitor rhetoric is really hurtful and disgusting to people who support resistance against Israel but don't want to live in a country where the interests of the resistance trump those of the state. Calling people traitors like this smacks of Bush's rhetoric in the "war on terror," where you're either "with us or against us," and doesn't sit well with many Lebanese.

I never thought I'd say this, but there was part of Samir Geagea's speech this afternoon that I agree with. He said that the use of Hezbollah's weapons has delegitimized their very existence. I tend to agree with this idea, because Hezbollah has decided to use its weapons in an internal dispute between Lebanese actors. (Here, it's important to remember that the myth that Hezbollah has never been part of inter-Lebanese fighting fails to include when Amal and Hezbollah fought each the during the civil war.) What has happened is that the March 14 government made a decision that Hezbollah disagreed with, and in reaction to this, they took up arms and occupied half of Beirut. This means that the weapons whose sole purpose is supposed to deter Israeli aggression and defend Lebanon has been used as a blunt political tool to try to force the government to resign, or at the very least, send it a far-from-subtle message. 

The line being taken by the opposition now (at least as far as the talking heads of al-Manar are concerned) is that Hezbollah has helped the state put down militias (namely Mustaqbal, or the Future movement). This position fails to take into consideration, for example, the fact that there are still armed militia members of Amal and the Syrian Social Nationalist Party walking around West Beirut.

Either armed militias are illegal or they aren't. What's happened is that the Army seems to have passively taken the side of Hezbollah, which means that their legitimacy will be decreased or destroyed in the eyes of other Lebanese communities, especially the Sunnis in Saida and Tripoli. It has also sent the message that the most effective political tool is military force. I imagine, then, that the Sunnis in Saida and Tripoli, the pro-government Christians and the Druze loyal to Walid Jumblatt have likely decided that they can no longer count on the Army to be an impartial arbiter for the state. This will surely lead to increased militia training and arming. It wouldn't surprise me if the lesson that the Lebanese Forces and the PSP have taken from the defeat of Mustaqbal (probably the weakest of the pro-government parties/militias, if one of the nastier ones on a local neighborhood level) is that they should be prepared for more of the same in the not-so-distant future.

So where does this leave us? Despite rumors earlier today, it doesn't look like Saniora, or anyone else, will resign from the government. So what? There's still no president, and the fundamental dysfunction of the Lebanese state has only been highlighted, not solved. If this all ends with Hezbollah and its allied militias pulling back to their territory in the next day or so, leaving a humiliating message for the other parties and their militias, we'll be back to where we started. Back to where we started, except a big part of the population will have lost faith in the idea that Hezbollah and its allies can be dealt with within the norms of a democratic system.

Since there is no way that any of these groups can compete with Hezbollah's military forces, look for them to embrace proxies. This might include the Sunnis accepting al-Qaeda militants and other groups hoping for more Israeli intervention. I'm sure that after the disaster that was the war in 2006, the Israeli establishment wouldn't mind taking advantage of the situation for  rematch. In any case, what this situation hasn't done is foster an atmosphere where either side feels like it can compromise. If anything, this whole situation has pushed March 14 further into its corner and inflated the arrogance and confidence of Hezbollah and its allies in the country and abroad. Neither of which bodes well for peace or stability in Lebanon.

Amin Gemayel, whom I can't stand, called Hezbollah's victory a Pyrrhic one (actually, he said it in French, the snooty bastard). I tend to think that, on a national level and in the long term, he's probably right. In any case, it's enough to turn some Lebanese into bitter Mercutios.

The rumor I've been hearing now, to the glee of some Aounist Christians in my neighborhood, is that Prime Minister Saniora has resigned. I can't confirm this, but it really begs the question of what he would resign from. Premiership of what? There is no government. The military is sitting around doing absolutely nothing, which may be best for the lives of the soldiers but is disastrous for the life of the state. I walked down to the eastern side of the bridge that connects east and west Beirut, and it was being guarded by a couple of tanks and APCs and some soldiers. The latter were sitting around shooting the shit and listening to the radio. One was sleeping in the shadow of his APC. I've also seen it reported that Jumblatt was forced to flee his home in Clemenceau under the protection of the Army.

Despite the fact that the army is much weaker than Hezbollah and would have lost any real shooting match, I keep wondering to myself if one of the reasons the Army is staying out is because of the head of the Army, Michel Suleiman. He had been put forward as a compromise candidate for president. Now that Hezbollah is calling the shots, it will be interesting to see who they put forward as the president, or if they appoint anyone at all.

It obviously won't be Aoun, which means that he's pretty much outlived his usefulness to the opposition cum ruling party, due to the fact that he was only helpful to them so long as they were working within the system. Now that they have taken matters into their own hands, they really don't need him anymore. I don't think that Hezbollah would even try to put someone Franjieh into the presidential palace, so that pretty much only leaves Suleiman. Maybe he cut a deal with Hezbollah to stay out of the fighting in exchange for the presidency.

But even the question of who will be the president may be putting the cart before the horse. It isn't clear at all now what Hezbollah will do. Will there be a fight between the pro-Government Christian militias (Lebanese Forces and Phalangists) and Hezbollah? Will Hezbollah install a new government of its choosing based on the old system? Will they install a government composed purely of Hezbollah members? Will they call for new elections? Your guess is as good as mine.

What's sure though, is this: those who may have have been somewhat sympathetic to the underlying principles of "the Resistance" and Hezbollah's part in that movement despite (being uncomfortable with the idea of an explicitly religious party) are likely to be turned off by the last few days' events. The chorus has always been the Hezbollah would never turn its weapons inward, but it has done that now. At the end of the day, Hezbollah went outside of the rules of the game. That game may have been frustrating and often paralyzing, but at least it was nominally democratic. Now, even if they call for new elections, Hezbollah has broken the rules of the game by resorting to violence to achieve a political goal. A lot of people won't forgive or forget this, and there will be even more people who will never be able to trust the party of God to follow the rules of the (at least nominally) democratic system, because they have, for all intents and purposes, overthrown the government by force.

UPDATE: I just saw Aoun on television assuring viewers that no one would be persecuted. Maybe he didn't get the memo, but Hezbollah seized power without him or his help. He looks more like a remora sucking with all his might to be pulled along with Hezbollah, feasting on what's left of the already feeble Lebanese state.

The war is continuing, but my neighborhood looks like it's any other Saturday morning. The upscale carft shop, L'Artisan du Liban, is apparently open; there is a couple walking a dog; traffic is coming through; and Ethiopian maids are beating carpets and washing windows.

Meanwhile, in Hamra, Hezbollah took all of one night to defeat the Mostaqbal (Future, the pro-government Sunni militia) and take over the area. There are now (much more professional) Hezbollah militiamen running the areas. The Future movement's television channel was shut down, along with its newspaper and radio station. According to my friends, the army and Internal Security Forces (the latter trained by the US and loyal to Future's Hariri) are nowhere to be found.

There had been rumors about Mustaqbal training in the last year or two. I suppose we can put that notion to rest, because it only took a night for them to get their asses handed to them by Hezbollah.

So what now? Jumblatt made this point yesterday, saying that Hezbollah could easily occupy all of Beirut, but then what? I'm wondering what's going to happen to East Beirut. Are the Christians going to (or going to be allowed to) stay out of it all together? Will Hezbollah wait until Mustaqbal has been completely routed and then aim their sites at Christian Lebanese Forces and Phalangists? Will Hezbollah use its new-found posiiton of power to negotiate, or will it just be the government now?

For the moment, I can't tell that we're in a civil war by looking out the window, but had I left work an hour later yesterday, I'd probably be holed up in my office or at friends' watching street fighting all across the neighborhood that has traditionally been the safest place in Beirut.  

UPDATE: Artisan du Liban isn't actually open, but the building it's in is. Besides grocery stores, though, the Mana'eesh places are open, as are the hair salon, antique shop and carpet repair shop by my place. 

Also, it's been pointed out to me that it's Friday today, which goes to show you how much it feels like a Saturday today here.

The garbage men stop coming:

The 8 o'clock news is presented in a flack jacket:

I don't have a picture for this one, but another way you might know that you're in a civil war if there's no more bread at your local stores...

I'm watching Hassan Nasrallah's speech right now on television, and it's very contradictory. One moment he says that this is war and that the government's decision to get rid of their man at the airport and to declare the Party of God's newly discovered independent telecommunications network illegal was a declaration of war. He says that Hezbollah's weapons will never be turned inward, but then he says that he will cut that hand off that tries to touch those weapons. (Here it's important to remember that the telecommunication network has been newly classified as a resistance weapon.) I never thought I'd say this, but Nasrallah kind of reminded me of Rumsfeld today.

Sometimes I wonder if in 1975, people knew that they were in a civil war. I have a feeling that long after the day that we now recognize as the start of the war, many people didn't know they were in one. Everyone's talking about whether or not this means war. Somehow I've got the feeling that we're already in a civil war, but we just haven't realized it yet.

UPDATE: There's something decidedly disconcerting about hearing the RPG explode in the distance right before you hear it on the television. MY neighborhood is calm right now; the opposing Christian factions have so far kept their distance from the fighting, but I can hear automatic gun fire and RPGs in the distance. 1840, 1958, 1975, 2008? Plus ça change...

Raymond Tanter from WINEP and MESH has a post up about why the Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK), the Iranian militants who have committed terrorist attacks against the regime in Teheran and who were hosted by Saddam's Iraq, should be delisted from the State Department's list of terrorist organizations. Besides the fact that the MEK is against the Iranian regime, basically, his argument boils down to the fact that they haven't committed any acts of terrorism for a few years:

On April 25, Patrick Clawson, deputy director of research at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, wrote that designation “should be based only on terrorism issues,” and that State “cited no alleged MEK terrorist activity since 2001, yet have increased allegations pertaining [to] the group’s non-terrorist activities.” Country Reports 2007 continues this trend of making allegations that are irrelevant to terrorist designation.

Tanter attempts to argue that MEK doesn't have the capability to carry out terrorist attacks, whereas we all know that anyone with a back pack, a bus pass and household peroxide can commit an act of terrorism. So while this argument isn't very convincing, he tells us, "de-listing would provide diplomatic leverage over Tehran, as the West is presently failing to constrain the Iranian regime’s nuclear program, sponsorship of terrorism, and subversion of Iraq."

In other words, the US should use a terrorist group for political bargaining. Of course this is nothing new: the Bush family has a long history of using Cuban terrorists to apply pressure on the Castro regime. What's striking, though, is the moral indignation Republicans muster when someone supports talking to groups like Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood and Hezbollah (most of the violence committed by the last group having been aimed at military targets). Charges of moral equivalency and weak knees in the face of terror are immediately brandished.

Well, Orlando Bosch blew up a passenger plane killing all 73 civilians aboard. Jose Dionisio Suarez and Virgilio Paz Romero assassinated the Chilean diplomat Orlando Letelier in Washington. The Mujahedeen-e Khalq assassinated the deputy chief of the Iranian Armed Forces General Staff, Brigadier General Ali Sayyaad Shirazi and attacked Iranian embassies and installations in 13 different countries at the same time. They also bombed the head office of the Islamic Republic Party and the Prime Minister's office killing 70 people, including the Chief Justice, the President and the Prime Minister.

Either terrorism is an acceptable tactic, or it's not. Washington can't understand why the rest of the world sees America as hypocritical, but Tanter's desire for the US to have its cake and eat it too should give us a hunch. 

UPDATE: Thinking more about this today has reminded me of the question of when a group can legitimately be de-listed as a terrorist organization. If the fact that MEK hasn't committed any acts of terrorism since 2001 is really enough to prove that they've mended their ways, then the same ought to apply to Hezbollah as well, because depending on who was responsible for the Argentinean attacks and the kidnapping of Tannenbaum, they haven't committed any acts of terrorism since 2000, the mid-1990s or even the late 1980s.

Otherwise, supporting terrorist groups or rebels or militias in a neighboring country has long been a staple of statecraft. In Africa, Sudan, Chad, Ethiopia, Uganda and Eritrea each support groups in their neighbors' territory. Iran and Syria support Hamas and Hezbollah; Syria supported the PLO in Jordan; while Israel supported the SLA in Lebanon; and Iran trained the Iraqi Badr Brigage to fight against Saddam. Hell, the first car bomb in Iraq wasn't unleashed by Zarqawi, but rather by Iyad Allawi with the help of the CIA. So while I abhor the use of violence against civilians as a political tool, I'm not naive and do know it happens all over. It's the smug hypocrisy of the "War on Terror" that really gets my goat in the same way that the "Fair and Balanced" slogan annoys me way more than the actual Fox News coverage.

McClatchy has an interesting piece on Iranian Brig. Gen. Qassem Suleimani, the head of the Revolutionary Guard's Quds Force. The story includes an awfully high percentage of anonymous sources, and the title might be a little hyperbolic, but I think the overall points made are fair enough.

Iran has a lot of sway in Iraq, which is normal. What's silly, though, is that Americans see this as some sort of meddling, because Iranian interests in Iraq are not always the same as American interests (although I'd argue that they coincide much more often than either side would like to admit). If Iran were occupying Mexico or Canada, you can be sure that the US would be "meddling" as well.

As for the actual article, I don't really have too much to add, except that it's important to look at Iranian involvement in Iraq not as a spoiler or as some diabolical force. If the US is going to come to terms with Middle Eastern players (of which Iran has become a major one, due in no small part to American intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq), Washington is going to have to look at Teheran (and Damascus and Hezbollah and Hamas, for that matter) as actors who have interests in the region that can't be run over roughshod by America.

This is a reality. So just as when one deals with Zimbabwe, it's necessary to take Pretoria into account, or how when dealing with Burma or North Korea one can't ignore Beijing, the road to peace in Iraq must necessarily pass through Teheran, but not in the way that American hawks would like it to.

I'd like to offer a solution to the political impasse as presented by a friend of mine in Paris. I've translated it into English for the Anglophone audience, but the original can be found in the comments of the previous post:


The example of Lebanon inspires new political choices for me which consist of fighting to eliminate the presidential office. The revolution did not finish the job; it was necessary to cut off the head of the state; the only president of this country will remain a cheese.



I also think that since Lebanon can't find itself a capable man to rally all the parties behind him, it's making a recruiting error, for because this man doesn't exist, it's necessary to widen the recruitment to other species: animals, vegetables or maybe an object, a machine, something that symbolizes Lebanon, a new totem.

The list is long. What do you think about an octopus, a cedar, a Mercedes, a 4x4, a fork, a chick pea or a lubbia?

I know that N has a preference for donkeys, and maybe that isn't such a bad idea. It's a hardy animal that can carry heavy loads upon its shoulders without ever complaining.

I think you guys need a donkey. It's a noble animal that we must reclaim. Furthermore, that would allow the beginning of a new collection of stickers for parties and colors. I'll trade you my Hezbollah donkey for your Lebanese Forces carrot.

I don't know if my modest contribution will allow the country to get out of this crisis, but if you think it's useful, spread the word, because we never know, the world's going crazy, so let's take it at its word and enjoy it.

The conservative blogosphere is full of armchair quarterbacks and Middle East "experts" (see comments) who are fond of telling us about Arab propaganda and accusing the "MSM" of toeing the "terrorist" line. So from time to time, it's a good idea to drop in on the Israeli side of the beat:

Today's memo from the Israel Defense Forces censorship office:

1. Real-time reports on the exact locations of rocket hits are strictly prohibited. Reports, on delayed-time, of exact locations must always be approved by the IDF Censor.

2. The IDF Censor will not authorize reports of rocket hits at IDF bases and/or strategic installations.

3. The IDF Censor will not authorize reporting on rockets that fell into the Mediterranean Sea.

4. The IDF Censor will not authorize photographs of rockets with identifying marks.

5. The IDF Censor will not authorize reports regarding visits by senior Israel Government officials and IDF officer in southern Israel.

6. The IDF Censor will not authorize information on exploded terrorist ordinance or any other malfunctioning ordinance.

7. Panoramic, wide-angle, etc. photographs of rocket hits are strictly prohibited.

Please ensure that all staff members are aware of the foregoing.

The foregoing does not obviate the obligation to submit to the IDF Censor – prior to publication – of any news item regarding rocket hits or any other subject that must be approved by the IDF Censor.

When complaining about a militant guerilla organization's restrictions on reporting, I think it's only fair to recall that the other side actually has a censorship office.

Sometimes I forget that I live by the sea. It's easy enough to do, what with Beirut traffic, honking horns and the city's urban brown and grey. Usually, I'm reminded by a glimpse of the Mediterranean from Ras Beirut, which sometimes prompts me to take a stroll on the corniche to smell the water.

Today, however, I was reminded by a taxi driver talking about the USS Cole, the US carrier that was attacked in Yemen and has now been deployed off the coast of Lebanon. No one I talked to today thought that the ship would actually do anything. Everyone seemed to agree that it was just a show of force by the US.

One Hezbollah partisan from Saida told me that if there were a war and the USS Cole was involved, it would be sunk. Then again, he also told me that he thought the Party of God would not only defeat Israel again this summer but also destroy the Jewish state. (I had to stop myself from laughing when he spoke of Hezbollah's 1 million troops, which would make up one in every four Lebanese citizens.)

In any case, no one seemed excited about the ship's presence in the area. A colleague of mine, an American-Lebanese Christian mother of four who supports March 14, also told me that she thought it was a bad idea.

At the end of the day, I think we've already got enough saber rattling here, and adding the noise of an additional and enormous American saber to the mix is probably the last thing we need here. Ironically, however, the US Navy's stated rationale for the deployment is stability. 

Hassan Nasrallah spoke this week, making this disconcerting remark:

I tell the shallow minds in Lebanon, who speak about war and peace decisions, that Israel is the only side that has been taking the decision of war or peace. The decision that we take is our legitimate, moral, humane and natural right in order to defend our people, land and country at a time of negligence by the government and the world.

While this is true to a limited extent, there are times when it takes two to tango, and now is one of those times. We know that the assassination of Mughniyeh was an escalation in the region, but we also know that there's a very high chance that if/when Hezbollah retaliates against Israel, Israel will attack Lebanon again.

Many Hezbollah partisans argue that it's their "right" to retaliate and generally agree that Israel would react to an assassinated ambassador, for example, with an attack on Lebanon. They have a tougher time, however, answering my question as to whether or not exercising their "right" to retaliate is worth plunging the country into another war.

Likewise, when I ask whether the rest of the country (as opposed to just the cadres of Hezbollah) ought not have a say in such a decision, these partisans generally insist (with an obstinate attitude that certainly is representative of Lebanese politics) that they do represent the whole country.

During the July war, one could still plausibly say that the brutal Israeli reaction was unexpected. In 2008, however, almost no one seems to doubt what the consequences of retaliation against Israel would mean for Lebanon. Regardless of whether or not another Israeli war would be legitimate, it certainly won't be unexpected. And I haven't been able to find anyone who's willing to come out and say that avenging the assassination of Mughniyeh is worth the lives of another thousand Lebanese people.

In another bid to see who can talk up Imad Mughniyeh the most as super terrorist extraordinaire (which was, until recently, mainly a contest between Hezbollah and Israel), an-Nahar's English-language site is now claiming that he was, in fact, responsible for the founding of the Mehdi Army in Iraq. While I'm no expert on the Mehdi Army, this claim seems more than a little over the top to me.

I'm just waiting to hear the news that Mughniyeh was also responsible for Pearl Harbor and all those bombings in Corsica and Spanish Basque country.

For a much more sober, and informed, view of the situation, I recommend this Newshour interview with Mohamad Bazzi and Robert Baer.

I've been missing in action for a while, even after my trip to Ethiopia, which I'll have a lot more on later.

Since I've been back, however, a lot has happened. Imad Mughniya was killed in a car bomb in Damascus (shortly after Michael Totten said I was one of the "notorious leftists who endlessly excuses Hezbollah" and accused me of spreading propaganda when I mentioned that car bombs were used by the American side as well in the comments here). Yesterday was the third anniversary of Hariri's assassination. And finally, there was just a small earthquake (more of a tremor, really) here in Beirut.

I don't have much to say about the first topic, but I will say that I always feel uncomfortable with any kind of extra-judicial killing and assassination, no matter whom it's done by. Also, this seems to be either a very serious breach of Syrian security or evidence that Damascus gave the Israelis or Americans the ok to carry out the attack as part of a larger deal. In any case, it signals an escalation between Hezbollah and Israel, so it wouldn't surprise me if there's an external (outside of Lebanon and Israel) attack against Israeli (or even American) interests. After all, the 1992 Israeli embassy bombing in Argentina was retaliation for the assassination of Hezbollah Secretary General Abbas al-Musawi, who was replaced by Nasrallah. Such escalation is always a bad thing for all parties involved.

As for the February 14 event, I went downtown to give it a look as Geagea was speaking, and it wasn't too big, although I didn't show up until about noon. One big reason for this was that it was rainy and cold. I was a bit worried about clashes arising last night between mourners of Hariri and Mughniya, but the cold rain was probably a blessing in disguise in that it's hard to get riled up to go out looking for trouble when you're soaking wet.

Finally, the earthquake: I didn't feel it, but I heard a rumble. All of my colleagues seem to have felt it, which might just mean that I'm insensitive, so to speak.

It's just occurred to me that there aren't very many places in the world where I could post about an earthquake, a car bomb and a protest against an assassination in the same piece. How's that for potpourri, Alex Trebek?

Back July 2006, Israel was "just defending itself" while laying waste to Lebanon after the capture of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah. However Israel is mystified when two rockets are fired from the South of Lebanon into Israeli territory this week. To hear Haaretz tell it, those rockets just came out of the blue for no good reason:

Earlier Tuesday, Israel filed a severe complaint with the United Nations Security Council and with Ban over the Katyusha firing.

The rockets struck the western Galilee town of Shlomi early Tuesday morning, causing no injuries. One of the rockets lightly damaged a house, and the second hit a street in the twon. Army Radio reported that the second rocket damaged an electricity pole.

The complaint called the rocket fire a severe violation of Security Council Resolution 1701, which brought the Second Lebanon War to an end.

According to the complaint, the rocket fire was additional evidence the resolution has yet to be fully implemented and therefore there is still a threat to Israel...

In the whole article there isn't a single mention of the shepherd Fadi Ahmad Abdel Aal, who was kidnapped the day before by the IDF:

The Israeli military said it had detained a man crossing the border with Lebanon.

"During an IDF (Israeli army) activity a suspect was identified crossing the Blue Line into Israel. He was arrested inside Israel and has been taken in for questioning," an Israeli army spokeswoman said.

She declined to give the suspect's nationality but said he was not Israeli.

However, a Lebanese security source told AFP the Israeli soldiers had abducted a man they named as Fadi Ahmad Abdel Aal inside Lebanon and "brought him inside Israel with them.

"The soldiers made an incursion of 100 metres (yards) to reach agricultural land where they found the shepherd," the source said on condition of anonymity.

The UN peacekeeping force said it had been informed of the incident by the Israeli military.

"UNIFIL has been informed by the IDF that they have apprehended a Lebanese citizen and we are in contact with them in order to resolve the situation as soon as possible," UNIFIL spokeswoman Yasmina Bouziane told AFP.

Israeli forces have in the past seized Lebanese shepherds along the border and taken them for questioning over possible links with Hezbollah militants. They are usually released after questioning.

So let's just recap here: in 2006, two Israeli soldiers are captured by Hezbollah, and that warrants a month-long spasm of bombs that killed over 1,000 civilians. This week, a Lebanese shepherd is "detained" (not to say kidnapped) by the IDF, and when two rockets are fired into Israel resulting in no casualties, this is "evidence" that "there is still a threat to Israel."

When it comes to Israel, what's good for the goose, it seems, is not good for the gander.

I generally try to stay away from the National Review. This explains why I didn't see the inane and meretricious "reporting" done by W. Thomas Smith Jr. until today. I've commented here before on ridiculous and sensationalist accounts of Lebanon, but this guy really takes the cake. Smith wrote last September:

Hezbollah is rehearsing for something big here. Not sure what or when. But a few days ago, between 4,000 and 5,000 HezB gunmen deployed to the Christian areas of Beirut in an unsettling “show of force,” positioning themselves at road intersections and other key points throughout the city.

It just so happens that I live on the East side of town in one of the "Christian areas of Beirut," and I can guarantee that Smith's account is laughably untrue. On the day that Smith says Hezbollah "deployed" to East Beirut, I was doing some shopping. I live on the border of Gemmayzeh and Mar Mkhail and went to Sassine and ABC that day (all of which are Christian neighborhoods), and rest assured, there were no Hezbollah militants, much less armed ones, to be seen anywhere.  Had what he described been true, there would most likely have been a civil war, or at the very least isolated street fighting. As it was, not only was there no fighting, but not a single journalist in Beirut, foreign or Lebanese, picked up on Hezbollah's alleged "show of force." There's a very simple reason for this: it never happened. If Hezbollah were to deploy a dozen armed militants to Achrafieh, that would be crossing one of Lebanon's red lines. Saying that there were 4,000-5,000 gunmen here is beyond farfetched; it's in the realm of the outlandishly comic. 

I've had neither the time, nor the stomach, to wade through all of this guy's Lebanon "coverage," but the few pieces I've opened are risible in their ridiculousness. Here's another example:

Hezbollah are not the only terrorists operating here in Lebanon: There are also Al Qaeda affiliates like Fatah Al Islam (they were not totally wiped out at Nahr al Bared), as well as Jund al Sham (Soldiers of Damascus), Jundallah, Hamas, and — though few Americans are aware of this — operating elements of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps on the Lebanese side of the Lebanese-Syrian border. These are just a few of the problem groups here: All operating under the auspices of Hezbollah.

Despite his mistranslation of "Sham," which in this context means Greater Syria (Syria, Lebanon and Palestine) and not Damascus, this little excerpt is absurd in that it explicitly says that all of the al-Qaeda-affiliated groups operating in the Palestinian camps, as well as Hamas and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard are "operating under the auspices of Hezbollah." First of all, no one knows who is connected to the various groups operating in the Palestinian camps. And second of all, anyone who believes that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard is "under the auspices" of Hezbollah, and not the other way around, obviously knows nothing about either organization.

Smith's scattergun approach to various armed groups in Lebanon is symptomatic of a larger, mostly American, approach to the Middle East, where al-Qaeda equals Hezbollah equals Hamas equals al Qaeda in Iraq equals Jund al-Sham ,etc. This is the kind of thinking that led most Americans to believe that Baghdad had something to do with 9/11 and leaves the defenders of the free world (see also: Reyes and Sarkozy) incapable of distinguishing between Sunnis and Shi'a.

Another fun read is this post, in which Smith brags about doing "reconnaissance" in the Dahiye, the suburbs where Hezbollah is based in Beirut. Or rather this would be funny if it were a satire and I were reading it to friends in Beirut. This guy seems to think that he's in a Chuck Norris movie, which would be fine except for a couple of things. First, this "journalism," in which Smith writes about spying on Hezbollah for pro-Government groups not only makes him sound like a macho asshole, it also casts a shadow of doubt on legitimate journalism done by actual reporters in a country where foreign correspondents are already viewed with an air of suspicion. Second, it makes Beirut sound like a war zone, which it's clearly not.

And then there's this gem. According to Smith, there were "some 200-plus heavily armed Hezbollah militiamen — positioned between the parliament and the Serail." As it happens, I've spent a fair amount of time downtown, and this is not the first time I've written about Americans talking about the sit-in protest without knowing what they're talking about. For the last few months, it's been hard to find more than a couple of dozen people at the protest, much less hundreds of armed militants. I have never, I repeat: never, seen any Hezbollah weapons downtown. They may have them down there, but if they do, they're hidden so well that someone who regularly strolls through the camp would not see them. To suggest that he surprised 200 armed militants out in the open while driving over the bridge that connects East and West Beirut is ridiculous.   

Finally, Jack Bauer -- I mean W. Thomas Smith Jr. -- gives us a post from an "undisclosed neighborhood":

Lebanon is extremely dangerous for Americans right now. In fact, some top officials within the 1559 Committee (essentially the heart and soul of the Cedars Revolution ... for a free Lebanon) believe some sort of dramatic terrorist event is going to take place here in Lebanon between now and mid-October. This is not a gut feeling, but a calculation based on intelligence analysis and chatter from the street.

Tony Nissi, the 1559 Committee chief here in Beirut (whom you'll recall from previous entries), has reason to believe Hezbollah knows who I am. So I am deliberately not staying in hotels: Instead, I'm spending nights in friends' houses — safe houses if you will — and always with bodyguards.

This one is the funniest of the bunch. If there are only half of the number of Americans in Lebanon now as there were during the July war, there'd still be over 10,000 Americans here, myself included. Beirut is decidedly not unsafe for Americans, unless of course they decide to go play G.I. Joe by arming themselves and doing "reconnaissance." But even if Smith were to get picked up by Hezbollah or the Army for spying (which is basically what he claims he's doing), they'd immediately recognize him for the  buffoon that he plainly is. He sounds more like a hapless character out of a Harry Mathews novel than an actual spy, or, God forbid, a journalist.

I could go on for pages about the factual inaccuracy of Smith's reports, but it would just be more of the same. It's amazing to me that NRO published any of Smith's "reports." They are so obviously bullshit that someone must have been asleep at the wheel over there. One of my pet peeves is the writing of partisan hacks who only travel for rhetorical flair, and Smith seems to be more of the same. The difference is that his case is so egregious that he's getting called out on it. There are well respected journalists here in Lebanon and elsewhere who not only know the country intimately but are good writers to boot. Anthony Shadid, Annia Ciezadlo and Mohamad Bazzi are only a few of the names that come to mind. So why is there a need to send Chuck Norris wannabe hacks like Smith who evidently don't know anything about the countries they're ostensibly covering? If NRO wants coverage of Lebanon, there's no dearth of talent already here in Beirut. Insisting on publishing Smith's fabrications in order to toe an ideological line that pays no heed of Lebanon's complex politics only makes NRO look stupid and dishonest.

If you're interested in NRO's response to similar allegations, you can see that here and here.

UPDATE: Kathryn Jean Lopez, online editor of the National Review has another statement up about Smith (emphasis mine):

With regard to the two posts in question, it is my belief, based on an investigation in which NRO discussed the matter with three independent sources who live and work in Lebanon (as well as other experts in the area), that Smith was probably either spun by his sources or confused about what he saw.

...the context that Smith was operating in an uncertain environment where he couldn't always be sure of what he was witnessing, and the caveats that he filled in the gaps by talking to sources within the Cedar Revolution movement and the Lebanese national-security apparatus, whose claims obviously should have been been treated with the same degree of skepticism as those of anyone with an agenda to advance.

As one of our sources put it: "The Arab tendency to lie and exaggerate about enemies is alive and well among pro-American Lebanese Christians as much as it is with the likes of Hamas." While Smith vouches for his sources, we cannot independently verify what they told him. That's why we're revisiting the posts in question and warning readers to take them with a grain of salt.

So let me get this straight. Lopez publishes Smith's ridiculous posts that betray a fundamental ignorance of Lebanon and the political situation here, posts which were either made up entirely or fed to him by pro-Government forces, and the problem here is the "Arab tendency to lie and exaggerate."

Wow. I almost don't even know where to start with this one. Maybe she should just throw in another couple of lines about America's mission civilisatrice and the white man's burden and be done with it.

In any case, someone should send her message to Tom Harb, a rabid March 14 supporter in the US, who's supporting Smith wholeheartedly (from Florida, no less) and accusing all of the journalists who have contradicted Smith of being on the Hezbollah payroll. Someone should remind him that his neo-conservative comrades in arms at NRO and elsewhere are fair weather friends to whom, at the end of the day, a wog is a wog, regardless of his political usefulness.

I spent this past weekend in the Chouf mountain, otherwise known as the personal fiefdom of Walid Jumblatt. I was looking forward to visiting the Moukhtara and its beautiful castle, and given the tense situation, I was surprised when my friend told me that conforming to Druze tradition, I could go have tea with and briefly meet Jumblatt -- or even ask him for something. Saturday morning is the time when the Moukhtara is open, and all are given tea while they wait for an audience with Walid Bek.

My timing was off, though, because it seems that US ambassador to Lebanon, Jeffrey Feltman, was due to arrive shortly for a lunch with Jumblatt and no amount of wasta with Jumblatt's private security detail was going to get us in.

One thing that bothers me about Lebanon is the checkpoints. They're a hassle, but given the situation, they seem necessary. What really gets to me though are those run by militias. Any journalist covering the south or Bekaa, or even parts of the Dahiye, are familiar with Hezbollah's stops, although I've never personally had to show my ID to anyone from Hezbollah, and despite my frequent trips to and through the sit-in downtown, I've never seen a member of the party armed.

Now March 14 and its allies are fond of complaining about the "state within a state" that is Hezbollah, but what you hear less about are their own states within a state. (Incidentally, I'm not fond of the expression, because in order for it to be true, there'd have to be a state within which to have a state -- something that just isn't true here.) While there are army checkpoints all around the Moukhtara, the guys with machine guns at the gate are PSP militia. They've got neither badge nor uniform -- their gun and the confidence of Walid being their only license for checking my ID. But these are the higher ranked guards, down the street, working at the local mechanic and sitting in a little booth are kids with walkie talkies.

When we decided to take a walk around the Moukhtara, we were immediately stopped by a kid who couldn't have been over 20 years old. I think he was intimidated by us, so when we refused to show any ID and only gave our first names, he called someone else as we were walking away. The second guy was only a little older and looked like he should be working second spatula at a saj stand. But there he was, asking for our ID. My friend looked him in the eye, immediately getting angry, and asked him where his ID was. After some prompting, the young and round boy opened his wallet and flashed a normal ID without letting us take it out or look at it too long. When we asked what gave him the authority to stop us, he lifted his shirt and showed us his walkie talkie. The Chouf, it seems, isn't so different from the south after all.

The rest of my trip, barring an embarrassing run-in with the way-too-friendly (and touchy!) tour guide at Beiteddine, was a welcome change from the city. Like true mountain men, we ate heartily and shot guns, and the clean air cleared my persistent cold right up.

Also, the Cedar reserve reminded me of something out of a fairy tale:

Thanks to those who have sent messages wondering if I was all right and where I was. I took a trip up to the Chouf on Tuesday and spent the night in a village in the mountain. I visited some of the Druze shebab to see how things were and how they were feeling after their unexpected victory over Hezbollah in Barouk.

When I got back to Beirut, what I thought was just a long electricity cut turned out to be several days without power (that's getting fixed while I type, insh'allah). So I've been out of the loop, news and otherwise, and will need some time to wrap my head around things before posting any comments about the situation.

There's also the fact that during the last week, I've not really wanted to do much except sleep. As a result, I didn't get any work done and am now swamped with things that have been left undone up to now.

This seems to be shaping up to be a full-scale coup d'état by Hezbollah with the support of the army. It looks like they're going piece by piece. Future was first, now the PSP is being taken in the Chouf, and I imagine the Lebanese Forces in the Christian sectors will be next.

The rest of the Lebanese parties were no match for Hezbollah, but when you throw in the army, what can you expect? Hariri and Joumblatt seem to have agreed not to fight, probably to save the bloodshed that would not have stopped the coup in any case. So they've agreed to go quietly in exchange for there not being a battle to which Future and PSP partisans would have gone like lambs to the slaughter.

The army seems to have cut a deal with Hezbollah, but it's hard to say what they could have done in any case, since they're so much weaker than the Party of God. So the current government will most likely be forced to resign, Suleiman will be appointed as president, and someone pliable will be appointed to be Prime Minister. Things will be like before 2005, except that instead of taking marching orders from Damascus, the new government will answer to Harat Hreik.

Yesterday, I spent a good part of the day in Hamra, where SSNP thugs were still armed and around. They broke up a group of unarmed neighborhood residents (most of whom were with Future) by shooting in the air and shouting. The night before a 16-year-old boy had been killed while delivering a narguileh for the shop he worked for. When they finally had a hard time getting the group of the boy's friends, family and neighbors to go inside despite plenty of shooting, they left. Shortly afterward, the Army finally showed up. The SSNP gunmen were going around Hamra without any challenge from the Army.

Today, things seem to be much better in West Beirut (although I haven't been there today), but fighting has spread all over the country, with Hezbollah apparently shelling a Druze village and opposition Druze forces fighting the PSP in Aley. Clashes are also going on in in Shweifat.

Add this to the fighting in Tripoli, and the death toll is nearly 40 now. In the words of Yeats:

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Another thing that's been bothering me is the fact that Mostaqbal's media outlets were shut down. I won't pretend that part of me doesn't feel a little tinge of delight at the idea of the Mostaqbal thugs getting some comeuppance. But punishing neighborhood thugs who fancy themselves militiamen is one thing, while shutting down media outlets is another. During the 2006 war, Hezbollah was (rightfully, to my mind) outraged by Israel's targeting of their television station, al-Manar. So why is it acceptable to have shut down Future TV?

I'm watching Kalam an-Nass right now, while the head of Future TV is being interviewed. According to him, a Lebanese soldier, in uniform, told them that they had to open the gates or else they'd be killed by Hezbollah militiamen. This is, of course, disconcerting on several levels. First of all, this would mean that a member of the ostensibly neutral Lebanese Army would have helped Hezbollah shut down the media outlet of a competing political party. But regardless of whether or not a soldier helped Hezbollah shut the station down, the latter certainly did disconnect Future TV. This is scandalous, and Hezbollah should be ashamed of itself.

A woman presenter, whose name I can't recall, just came on and gave Hezbollah a piece of her mind. She said that she's spent the last year and a half doing reports on the lot of the people of the south and how they've suffered during the war of 2006 and after. Then she explained how al-Manar reported that the staff of Future TV "fled" the premises, like thieves or criminals, when in fact they were told to leave if they didn't want to die. She said that forgetting the parties and forgetting politics, this kind of treatment and the occupation of Beirut has made regular people, people like her, hate Hezbollah. She said that after people like her who did their best to take in refugees after the war in 2006 are treated like this and accused of being traitors, Hezbollah should be ashamed of itself. Of course a presenter on Future TV isn't exactly representative of the man on the street, but her point is well taken.

I can say, however, that the opposition has lost the sympathy of people who have supported the principles of the resistance, even if they had really ambivalent feelings about the religious and authoritarian form it's taken. And the traitor rhetoric is really hurtful and disgusting to people who support resistance against Israel but don't want to live in a country where the interests of the resistance trump those of the state. Calling people traitors like this smacks of Bush's rhetoric in the "war on terror," where you're either "with us or against us," and doesn't sit well with many Lebanese.

I never thought I'd say this, but there was part of Samir Geagea's speech this afternoon that I agree with. He said that the use of Hezbollah's weapons has delegitimized their very existence. I tend to agree with this idea, because Hezbollah has decided to use its weapons in an internal dispute between Lebanese actors. (Here, it's important to remember that the myth that Hezbollah has never been part of inter-Lebanese fighting fails to include when Amal and Hezbollah fought each the during the civil war.) What has happened is that the March 14 government made a decision that Hezbollah disagreed with, and in reaction to this, they took up arms and occupied half of Beirut. This means that the weapons whose sole purpose is supposed to deter Israeli aggression and defend Lebanon has been used as a blunt political tool to try to force the government to resign, or at the very least, send it a far-from-subtle message. 

The line being taken by the opposition now (at least as far as the talking heads of al-Manar are concerned) is that Hezbollah has helped the state put down militias (namely Mustaqbal, or the Future movement). This position fails to take into consideration, for example, the fact that there are still armed militia members of Amal and the Syrian Social Nationalist Party walking around West Beirut.

Either armed militias are illegal or they aren't. What's happened is that the Army seems to have passively taken the side of Hezbollah, which means that their legitimacy will be decreased or destroyed in the eyes of other Lebanese communities, especially the Sunnis in Saida and Tripoli. It has also sent the message that the most effective political tool is military force. I imagine, then, that the Sunnis in Saida and Tripoli, the pro-government Christians and the Druze loyal to Walid Jumblatt have likely decided that they can no longer count on the Army to be an impartial arbiter for the state. This will surely lead to increased militia training and arming. It wouldn't surprise me if the lesson that the Lebanese Forces and the PSP have taken from the defeat of Mustaqbal (probably the weakest of the pro-government parties/militias, if one of the nastier ones on a local neighborhood level) is that they should be prepared for more of the same in the not-so-distant future.

So where does this leave us? Despite rumors earlier today, it doesn't look like Saniora, or anyone else, will resign from the government. So what? There's still no president, and the fundamental dysfunction of the Lebanese state has only been highlighted, not solved. If this all ends with Hezbollah and its allied militias pulling back to their territory in the next day or so, leaving a humiliating message for the other parties and their militias, we'll be back to where we started. Back to where we started, except a big part of the population will have lost faith in the idea that Hezbollah and its allies can be dealt with within the norms of a democratic system.

Since there is no way that any of these groups can compete with Hezbollah's military forces, look for them to embrace proxies. This might include the Sunnis accepting al-Qaeda militants and other groups hoping for more Israeli intervention. I'm sure that after the disaster that was the war in 2006, the Israeli establishment wouldn't mind taking advantage of the situation for  rematch. In any case, what this situation hasn't done is foster an atmosphere where either side feels like it can compromise. If anything, this whole situation has pushed March 14 further into its corner and inflated the arrogance and confidence of Hezbollah and its allies in the country and abroad. Neither of which bodes well for peace or stability in Lebanon.

Amin Gemayel, whom I can't stand, called Hezbollah's victory a Pyrrhic one (actually, he said it in French, the snooty bastard). I tend to think that, on a national level and in the long term, he's probably right. In any case, it's enough to turn some Lebanese into bitter Mercutios.

The rumor I've been hearing now, to the glee of some Aounist Christians in my neighborhood, is that Prime Minister Saniora has resigned. I can't confirm this, but it really begs the question of what he would resign from. Premiership of what? There is no government. The military is sitting around doing absolutely nothing, which may be best for the lives of the soldiers but is disastrous for the life of the state. I walked down to the eastern side of the bridge that connects east and west Beirut, and it was being guarded by a couple of tanks and APCs and some soldiers. The latter were sitting around shooting the shit and listening to the radio. One was sleeping in the shadow of his APC. I've also seen it reported that Jumblatt was forced to flee his home in Clemenceau under the protection of the Army.

Despite the fact that the army is much weaker than Hezbollah and would have lost any real shooting match, I keep wondering to myself if one of the reasons the Army is staying out is because of the head of the Army, Michel Suleiman. He had been put forward as a compromise candidate for president. Now that Hezbollah is calling the shots, it will be interesting to see who they put forward as the president, or if they appoint anyone at all.

It obviously won't be Aoun, which means that he's pretty much outlived his usefulness to the opposition cum ruling party, due to the fact that he was only helpful to them so long as they were working within the system. Now that they have taken matters into their own hands, they really don't need him anymore. I don't think that Hezbollah would even try to put someone Franjieh into the presidential palace, so that pretty much only leaves Suleiman. Maybe he cut a deal with Hezbollah to stay out of the fighting in exchange for the presidency.

But even the question of who will be the president may be putting the cart before the horse. It isn't clear at all now what Hezbollah will do. Will there be a fight between the pro-Government Christian militias (Lebanese Forces and Phalangists) and Hezbollah? Will Hezbollah install a new government of its choosing based on the old system? Will they install a government composed purely of Hezbollah members? Will they call for new elections? Your guess is as good as mine.

What's sure though, is this: those who may have have been somewhat sympathetic to the underlying principles of "the Resistance" and Hezbollah's part in that movement despite (being uncomfortable with the idea of an explicitly religious party) are likely to be turned off by the last few days' events. The chorus has always been the Hezbollah would never turn its weapons inward, but it has done that now. At the end of the day, Hezbollah went outside of the rules of the game. That game may have been frustrating and often paralyzing, but at least it was nominally democratic. Now, even if they call for new elections, Hezbollah has broken the rules of the game by resorting to violence to achieve a political goal. A lot of people won't forgive or forget this, and there will be even more people who will never be able to trust the party of God to follow the rules of the (at least nominally) democratic system, because they have, for all intents and purposes, overthrown the government by force.

UPDATE: I just saw Aoun on television assuring viewers that no one would be persecuted. Maybe he didn't get the memo, but Hezbollah seized power without him or his help. He looks more like a remora sucking with all his might to be pulled along with Hezbollah, feasting on what's left of the already feeble Lebanese state.

The war is continuing, but my neighborhood looks like it's any other Saturday morning. The upscale carft shop, L'Artisan du Liban, is apparently open; there is a couple walking a dog; traffic is coming through; and Ethiopian maids are beating carpets and washing windows.

Meanwhile, in Hamra, Hezbollah took all of one night to defeat the Mostaqbal (Future, the pro-government Sunni militia) and take over the area. There are now (much more professional) Hezbollah militiamen running the areas. The Future movement's television channel was shut down, along with its newspaper and radio station. According to my friends, the army and Internal Security Forces (the latter trained by the US and loyal to Future's Hariri) are nowhere to be found.

There had been rumors about Mustaqbal training in the last year or two. I suppose we can put that notion to rest, because it only took a night for them to get their asses handed to them by Hezbollah.

So what now? Jumblatt made this point yesterday, saying that Hezbollah could easily occupy all of Beirut, but then what? I'm wondering what's going to happen to East Beirut. Are the Christians going to (or going to be allowed to) stay out of it all together? Will Hezbollah wait until Mustaqbal has been completely routed and then aim their sites at Christian Lebanese Forces and Phalangists? Will Hezbollah use its new-found posiiton of power to negotiate, or will it just be the government now?

For the moment, I can't tell that we're in a civil war by looking out the window, but had I left work an hour later yesterday, I'd probably be holed up in my office or at friends' watching street fighting all across the neighborhood that has traditionally been the safest place in Beirut.  

UPDATE: Artisan du Liban isn't actually open, but the building it's in is. Besides grocery stores, though, the Mana'eesh places are open, as are the hair salon, antique shop and carpet repair shop by my place. 

Also, it's been pointed out to me that it's Friday today, which goes to show you how much it feels like a Saturday today here.

The garbage men stop coming:

The 8 o'clock news is presented in a flack jacket:

I don't have a picture for this one, but another way you might know that you're in a civil war if there's no more bread at your local stores...

I'm watching Hassan Nasrallah's speech right now on television, and it's very contradictory. One moment he says that this is war and that the government's decision to get rid of their man at the airport and to declare the Party of God's newly discovered independent telecommunications network illegal was a declaration of war. He says that Hezbollah's weapons will never be turned inward, but then he says that he will cut that hand off that tries to touch those weapons. (Here it's important to remember that the telecommunication network has been newly classified as a resistance weapon.) I never thought I'd say this, but Nasrallah kind of reminded me of Rumsfeld today.

Sometimes I wonder if in 1975, people knew that they were in a civil war. I have a feeling that long after the day that we now recognize as the start of the war, many people didn't know they were in one. Everyone's talking about whether or not this means war. Somehow I've got the feeling that we're already in a civil war, but we just haven't realized it yet.

UPDATE: There's something decidedly disconcerting about hearing the RPG explode in the distance right before you hear it on the television. MY neighborhood is calm right now; the opposing Christian factions have so far kept their distance from the fighting, but I can hear automatic gun fire and RPGs in the distance. 1840, 1958, 1975, 2008? Plus ça change...

Raymond Tanter from WINEP and MESH has a post up about why the Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK), the Iranian militants who have committed terrorist attacks against the regime in Teheran and who were hosted by Saddam's Iraq, should be delisted from the State Department's list of terrorist organizations. Besides the fact that the MEK is against the Iranian regime, basically, his argument boils down to the fact that they haven't committed any acts of terrorism for a few years:

On April 25, Patrick Clawson, deputy director of research at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, wrote that designation “should be based only on terrorism issues,” and that State “cited no alleged MEK terrorist activity since 2001, yet have increased allegations pertaining [to] the group’s non-terrorist activities.” Country Reports 2007 continues this trend of making allegations that are irrelevant to terrorist designation.

Tanter attempts to argue that MEK doesn't have the capability to carry out terrorist attacks, whereas we all know that anyone with a back pack, a bus pass and household peroxide can commit an act of terrorism. So while this argument isn't very convincing, he tells us, "de-listing would provide diplomatic leverage over Tehran, as the West is presently failing to constrain the Iranian regime’s nuclear program, sponsorship of terrorism, and subversion of Iraq."

In other words, the US should use a terrorist group for political bargaining. Of course this is nothing new: the Bush family has a long history of using Cuban terrorists to apply pressure on the Castro regime. What's striking, though, is the moral indignation Republicans muster when someone supports talking to groups like Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood and Hezbollah (most of the violence committed by the last group having been aimed at military targets). Charges of moral equivalency and weak knees in the face of terror are immediately brandished.

Well, Orlando Bosch blew up a passenger plane killing all 73 civilians aboard. Jose Dionisio Suarez and Virgilio Paz Romero assassinated the Chilean diplomat Orlando Letelier in Washington. The Mujahedeen-e Khalq assassinated the deputy chief of the Iranian Armed Forces General Staff, Brigadier General Ali Sayyaad Shirazi and attacked Iranian embassies and installations in 13 different countries at the same time. They also bombed the head office of the Islamic Republic Party and the Prime Minister's office killing 70 people, including the Chief Justice, the President and the Prime Minister.

Either terrorism is an acceptable tactic, or it's not. Washington can't understand why the rest of the world sees America as hypocritical, but Tanter's desire for the US to have its cake and eat it too should give us a hunch. 

UPDATE: Thinking more about this today has reminded me of the question of when a group can legitimately be de-listed as a terrorist organization. If the fact that MEK hasn't committed any acts of terrorism since 2001 is really enough to prove that they've mended their ways, then the same ought to apply to Hezbollah as well, because depending on who was responsible for the Argentinean attacks and the kidnapping of Tannenbaum, they haven't committed any acts of terrorism since 2000, the mid-1990s or even the late 1980s.

Otherwise, supporting terrorist groups or rebels or militias in a neighboring country has long been a staple of statecraft. In Africa, Sudan, Chad, Ethiopia, Uganda and Eritrea each support groups in their neighbors' territory. Iran and Syria support Hamas and Hezbollah; Syria supported the PLO in Jordan; while Israel supported the SLA in Lebanon; and Iran trained the Iraqi Badr Brigage to fight against Saddam. Hell, the first car bomb in Iraq wasn't unleashed by Zarqawi, but rather by Iyad Allawi with the help of the CIA. So while I abhor the use of violence against civilians as a political tool, I'm not naive and do know it happens all over. It's the smug hypocrisy of the "War on Terror" that really gets my goat in the same way that the "Fair and Balanced" slogan annoys me way more than the actual Fox News coverage.

McClatchy has an interesting piece on Iranian Brig. Gen. Qassem Suleimani, the head of the Revolutionary Guard's Quds Force. The story includes an awfully high percentage of anonymous sources, and the title might be a little hyperbolic, but I think the overall points made are fair enough.

Iran has a lot of sway in Iraq, which is normal. What's silly, though, is that Americans see this as some sort of meddling, because Iranian interests in Iraq are not always the same as American interests (although I'd argue that they coincide much more often than either side would like to admit). If Iran were occupying Mexico or Canada, you can be sure that the US would be "meddling" as well.

As for the actual article, I don't really have too much to add, except that it's important to look at Iranian involvement in Iraq not as a spoiler or as some diabolical force. If the US is going to come to terms with Middle Eastern players (of which Iran has become a major one, due in no small part to American intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq), Washington is going to have to look at Teheran (and Damascus and Hezbollah and Hamas, for that matter) as actors who have interests in the region that can't be run over roughshod by America.

This is a reality. So just as when one deals with Zimbabwe, it's necessary to take Pretoria into account, or how when dealing with Burma or North Korea one can't ignore Beijing, the road to peace in Iraq must necessarily pass through Teheran, but not in the way that American hawks would like it to.

I'd like to offer a solution to the political impasse as presented by a friend of mine in Paris. I've translated it into English for the Anglophone audience, but the original can be found in the comments of the previous post:


The example of Lebanon inspires new political choices for me which consist of fighting to eliminate the presidential office. The revolution did not finish the job; it was necessary to cut off the head of the state; the only president of this country will remain a cheese.



I also think that since Lebanon can't find itself a capable man to rally all the parties behind him, it's making a recruiting error, for because this man doesn't exist, it's necessary to widen the recruitment to other species: animals, vegetables or maybe an object, a machine, something that symbolizes Lebanon, a new totem.

The list is long. What do you think about an octopus, a cedar, a Mercedes, a 4x4, a fork, a chick pea or a lubbia?

I know that N has a preference for donkeys, and maybe that isn't such a bad idea. It's a hardy animal that can carry heavy loads upon its shoulders without ever complaining.

I think you guys need a donkey. It's a noble animal that we must reclaim. Furthermore, that would allow the beginning of a new collection of stickers for parties and colors. I'll trade you my Hezbollah donkey for your Lebanese Forces carrot.

I don't know if my modest contribution will allow the country to get out of this crisis, but if you think it's useful, spread the word, because we never know, the world's going crazy, so let's take it at its word and enjoy it.

The conservative blogosphere is full of armchair quarterbacks and Middle East "experts" (see comments) who are fond of telling us about Arab propaganda and accusing the "MSM" of toeing the "terrorist" line. So from time to time, it's a good idea to drop in on the Israeli side of the beat:

Today's memo from the Israel Defense Forces censorship office:

1. Real-time reports on the exact locations of rocket hits are strictly prohibited. Reports, on delayed-time, of exact locations must always be approved by the IDF Censor.

2. The IDF Censor will not authorize reports of rocket hits at IDF bases and/or strategic installations.

3. The IDF Censor will not authorize reporting on rockets that fell into the Mediterranean Sea.

4. The IDF Censor will not authorize photographs of rockets with identifying marks.

5. The IDF Censor will not authorize reports regarding visits by senior Israel Government officials and IDF officer in southern Israel.

6. The IDF Censor will not authorize information on exploded terrorist ordinance or any other malfunctioning ordinance.

7. Panoramic, wide-angle, etc. photographs of rocket hits are strictly prohibited.

Please ensure that all staff members are aware of the foregoing.

The foregoing does not obviate the obligation to submit to the IDF Censor – prior to publication – of any news item regarding rocket hits or any other subject that must be approved by the IDF Censor.

When complaining about a militant guerilla organization's restrictions on reporting, I think it's only fair to recall that the other side actually has a censorship office.

Sometimes I forget that I live by the sea. It's easy enough to do, what with Beirut traffic, honking horns and the city's urban brown and grey. Usually, I'm reminded by a glimpse of the Mediterranean from Ras Beirut, which sometimes prompts me to take a stroll on the corniche to smell the water.

Today, however, I was reminded by a taxi driver talking about the USS Cole, the US carrier that was attacked in Yemen and has now been deployed off the coast of Lebanon. No one I talked to today thought that the ship would actually do anything. Everyone seemed to agree that it was just a show of force by the US.

One Hezbollah partisan from Saida told me that if there were a war and the USS Cole was involved, it would be sunk. Then again, he also told me that he thought the Party of God would not only defeat Israel again this summer but also destroy the Jewish state. (I had to stop myself from laughing when he spoke of Hezbollah's 1 million troops, which would make up one in every four Lebanese citizens.)

In any case, no one seemed excited about the ship's presence in the area. A colleague of mine, an American-Lebanese Christian mother of four who supports March 14, also told me that she thought it was a bad idea.

At the end of the day, I think we've already got enough saber rattling here, and adding the noise of an additional and enormous American saber to the mix is probably the last thing we need here. Ironically, however, the US Navy's stated rationale for the deployment is stability. 

Hassan Nasrallah spoke this week, making this disconcerting remark:

I tell the shallow minds in Lebanon, who speak about war and peace decisions, that Israel is the only side that has been taking the decision of war or peace. The decision that we take is our legitimate, moral, humane and natural right in order to defend our people, land and country at a time of negligence by the government and the world.

While this is true to a limited extent, there are times when it takes two to tango, and now is one of those times. We know that the assassination of Mughniyeh was an escalation in the region, but we also know that there's a very high chance that if/when Hezbollah retaliates against Israel, Israel will attack Lebanon again.

Many Hezbollah partisans argue that it's their "right" to retaliate and generally agree that Israel would react to an assassinated ambassador, for example, with an attack on Lebanon. They have a tougher time, however, answering my question as to whether or not exercising their "right" to retaliate is worth plunging the country into another war.

Likewise, when I ask whether the rest of the country (as opposed to just the cadres of Hezbollah) ought not have a say in such a decision, these partisans generally insist (with an obstinate attitude that certainly is representative of Lebanese politics) that they do represent the whole country.

During the July war, one could still plausibly say that the brutal Israeli reaction was unexpected. In 2008, however, almost no one seems to doubt what the consequences of retaliation against Israel would mean for Lebanon. Regardless of whether or not another Israeli war would be legitimate, it certainly won't be unexpected. And I haven't been able to find anyone who's willing to come out and say that avenging the assassination of Mughniyeh is worth the lives of another thousand Lebanese people.

In another bid to see who can talk up Imad Mughniyeh the most as super terrorist extraordinaire (which was, until recently, mainly a contest between Hezbollah and Israel), an-Nahar's English-language site is now claiming that he was, in fact, responsible for the founding of the Mehdi Army in Iraq. While I'm no expert on the Mehdi Army, this claim seems more than a little over the top to me.

I'm just waiting to hear the news that Mughniyeh was also responsible for Pearl Harbor and all those bombings in Corsica and Spanish Basque country.

For a much more sober, and informed, view of the situation, I recommend this Newshour interview with Mohamad Bazzi and Robert Baer.

I've been missing in action for a while, even after my trip to Ethiopia, which I'll have a lot more on later.

Since I've been back, however, a lot has happened. Imad Mughniya was killed in a car bomb in Damascus (shortly after Michael Totten said I was one of the "notorious leftists who endlessly excuses Hezbollah" and accused me of spreading propaganda when I mentioned that car bombs were used by the American side as well in the comments here). Yesterday was the third anniversary of Hariri's assassination. And finally, there was just a small earthquake (more of a tremor, really) here in Beirut.

I don't have much to say about the first topic, but I will say that I always feel uncomfortable with any kind of extra-judicial killing and assassination, no matter whom it's done by. Also, this seems to be either a very serious breach of Syrian security or evidence that Damascus gave the Israelis or Americans the ok to carry out the attack as part of a larger deal. In any case, it signals an escalation between Hezbollah and Israel, so it wouldn't surprise me if there's an external (outside of Lebanon and Israel) attack against Israeli (or even American) interests. After all, the 1992 Israeli embassy bombing in Argentina was retaliation for the assassination of Hezbollah Secretary General Abbas al-Musawi, who was replaced by Nasrallah. Such escalation is always a bad thing for all parties involved.

As for the February 14 event, I went downtown to give it a look as Geagea was speaking, and it wasn't too big, although I didn't show up until about noon. One big reason for this was that it was rainy and cold. I was a bit worried about clashes arising last night between mourners of Hariri and Mughniya, but the cold rain was probably a blessing in disguise in that it's hard to get riled up to go out looking for trouble when you're soaking wet.

Finally, the earthquake: I didn't feel it, but I heard a rumble. All of my colleagues seem to have felt it, which might just mean that I'm insensitive, so to speak.

It's just occurred to me that there aren't very many places in the world where I could post about an earthquake, a car bomb and a protest against an assassination in the same piece. How's that for potpourri, Alex Trebek?

Back July 2006, Israel was "just defending itself" while laying waste to Lebanon after the capture of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah. However Israel is mystified when two rockets are fired from the South of Lebanon into Israeli territory this week. To hear Haaretz tell it, those rockets just came out of the blue for no good reason:

Earlier Tuesday, Israel filed a severe complaint with the United Nations Security Council and with Ban over the Katyusha firing.

The rockets struck the western Galilee town of Shlomi early Tuesday morning, causing no injuries. One of the rockets lightly damaged a house, and the second hit a street in the twon. Army Radio reported that the second rocket damaged an electricity pole.

The complaint called the rocket fire a severe violation of Security Council Resolution 1701, which brought the Second Lebanon War to an end.

According to the complaint, the rocket fire was additional evidence the resolution has yet to be fully implemented and therefore there is still a threat to Israel...

In the whole article there isn't a single mention of the shepherd Fadi Ahmad Abdel Aal, who was kidnapped the day before by the IDF:

The Israeli military said it had detained a man crossing the border with Lebanon.

"During an IDF (Israeli army) activity a suspect was identified crossing the Blue Line into Israel. He was arrested inside Israel and has been taken in for questioning," an Israeli army spokeswoman said.

She declined to give the suspect's nationality but said he was not Israeli.

However, a Lebanese security source told AFP the Israeli soldiers had abducted a man they named as Fadi Ahmad Abdel Aal inside Lebanon and "brought him inside Israel with them.

"The soldiers made an incursion of 100 metres (yards) to reach agricultural land where they found the shepherd," the source said on condition of anonymity.

The UN peacekeeping force said it had been informed of the incident by the Israeli military.

"UNIFIL has been informed by the IDF that they have apprehended a Lebanese citizen and we are in contact with them in order to resolve the situation as soon as possible," UNIFIL spokeswoman Yasmina Bouziane told AFP.

Israeli forces have in the past seized Lebanese shepherds along the border and taken them for questioning over possible links with Hezbollah militants. They are usually released after questioning.

So let's just recap here: in 2006, two Israeli soldiers are captured by Hezbollah, and that warrants a month-long spasm of bombs that killed over 1,000 civilians. This week, a Lebanese shepherd is "detained" (not to say kidnapped) by the IDF, and when two rockets are fired into Israel resulting in no casualties, this is "evidence" that "there is still a threat to Israel."

When it comes to Israel, what's good for the goose, it seems, is not good for the gander.

I generally try to stay away from the National Review. This explains why I didn't see the inane and meretricious "reporting" done by W. Thomas Smith Jr. until today. I've commented here before on ridiculous and sensationalist accounts of Lebanon, but this guy really takes the cake. Smith wrote last September:

Hezbollah is rehearsing for something big here. Not sure what or when. But a few days ago, between 4,000 and 5,000 HezB gunmen deployed to the Christian areas of Beirut in an unsettling “show of force,” positioning themselves at road intersections and other key points throughout the city.

It just so happens that I live on the East side of town in one of the "Christian areas of Beirut," and I can guarantee that Smith's account is laughably untrue. On the day that Smith says Hezbollah "deployed" to East Beirut, I was doing some shopping. I live on the border of Gemmayzeh and Mar Mkhail and went to Sassine and ABC that day (all of which are Christian neighborhoods), and rest assured, there were no Hezbollah militants, much less armed ones, to be seen anywhere.  Had what he described been true, there would most likely have been a civil war, or at the very least isolated street fighting. As it was, not only was there no fighting, but not a single journalist in Beirut, foreign or Lebanese, picked up on Hezbollah's alleged "show of force." There's a very simple reason for this: it never happened. If Hezbollah were to deploy a dozen armed militants to Achrafieh, that would be crossing one of Lebanon's red lines. Saying that there were 4,000-5,000 gunmen here is beyond farfetched; it's in the realm of the outlandishly comic. 

I've had neither the time, nor the stomach, to wade through all of this guy's Lebanon "coverage," but the few pieces I've opened are risible in their ridiculousness. Here's another example:

Hezbollah are not the only terrorists operating here in Lebanon: There are also Al Qaeda affiliates like Fatah Al Islam (they were not totally wiped out at Nahr al Bared), as well as Jund al Sham (Soldiers of Damascus), Jundallah, Hamas, and — though few Americans are aware of this — operating elements of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps on the Lebanese side of the Lebanese-Syrian border. These are just a few of the problem groups here: All operating under the auspices of Hezbollah.

Despite his mistranslation of "Sham," which in this context means Greater Syria (Syria, Lebanon and Palestine) and not Damascus, this little excerpt is absurd in that it explicitly says that all of the al-Qaeda-affiliated groups operating in the Palestinian camps, as well as Hamas and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard are "operating under the auspices of Hezbollah." First of all, no one knows who is connected to the various groups operating in the Palestinian camps. And second of all, anyone who believes that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard is "under the auspices" of Hezbollah, and not the other way around, obviously knows nothing about either organization.

Smith's scattergun approach to various armed groups in Lebanon is symptomatic of a larger, mostly American, approach to the Middle East, where al-Qaeda equals Hezbollah equals Hamas equals al Qaeda in Iraq equals Jund al-Sham ,etc. This is the kind of thinking that led most Americans to believe that Baghdad had something to do with 9/11 and leaves the defenders of the free world (see also: Reyes and Sarkozy) incapable of distinguishing between Sunnis and Shi'a.

Another fun read is this post, in which Smith brags about doing "reconnaissance" in the Dahiye, the suburbs where Hezbollah is based in Beirut. Or rather this would be funny if it were a satire and I were reading it to friends in Beirut. This guy seems to think that he's in a Chuck Norris movie, which would be fine except for a couple of things. First, this "journalism," in which Smith writes about spying on Hezbollah for pro-Government groups not only makes him sound like a macho asshole, it also casts a shadow of doubt on legitimate journalism done by actual reporters in a country where foreign correspondents are already viewed with an air of suspicion. Second, it makes Beirut sound like a war zone, which it's clearly not.

And then there's this gem. According to Smith, there were "some 200-plus heavily armed Hezbollah militiamen — positioned between the parliament and the Serail." As it happens, I've spent a fair amount of time downtown, and this is not the first time I've written about Americans talking about the sit-in protest without knowing what they're talking about. For the last few months, it's been hard to find more than a couple of dozen people at the protest, much less hundreds of armed militants. I have never, I repeat: never, seen any Hezbollah weapons downtown. They may have them down there, but if they do, they're hidden so well that someone who regularly strolls through the camp would not see them. To suggest that he surprised 200 armed militants out in the open while driving over the bridge that connects East and West Beirut is ridiculous.   

Finally, Jack Bauer -- I mean W. Thomas Smith Jr. -- gives us a post from an "undisclosed neighborhood":

Lebanon is extremely dangerous for Americans right now. In fact, some top officials within the 1559 Committee (essentially the heart and soul of the Cedars Revolution ... for a free Lebanon) believe some sort of dramatic terrorist event is going to take place here in Lebanon between now and mid-October. This is not a gut feeling, but a calculation based on intelligence analysis and chatter from the street.

Tony Nissi, the 1559 Committee chief here in Beirut (whom you'll recall from previous entries), has reason to believe Hezbollah knows who I am. So I am deliberately not staying in hotels: Instead, I'm spending nights in friends' houses — safe houses if you will — and always with bodyguards.

This one is the funniest of the bunch. If there are only half of the number of Americans in Lebanon now as there were during the July war, there'd still be over 10,000 Americans here, myself included. Beirut is decidedly not unsafe for Americans, unless of course they decide to go play G.I. Joe by arming themselves and doing "reconnaissance." But even if Smith were to get picked up by Hezbollah or the Army for spying (which is basically what he claims he's doing), they'd immediately recognize him for the  buffoon that he plainly is. He sounds more like a hapless character out of a Harry Mathews novel than an actual spy, or, God forbid, a journalist.

I could go on for pages about the factual inaccuracy of Smith's reports, but it would just be more of the same. It's amazing to me that NRO published any of Smith's "reports." They are so obviously bullshit that someone must have been asleep at the wheel over there. One of my pet peeves is the writing of partisan hacks who only travel for rhetorical flair, and Smith seems to be more of the same. The difference is that his case is so egregious that he's getting called out on it. There are well respected journalists here in Lebanon and elsewhere who not only know the country intimately but are good writers to boot. Anthony Shadid, Annia Ciezadlo and Mohamad Bazzi are only a few of the names that come to mind. So why is there a need to send Chuck Norris wannabe hacks like Smith who evidently don't know anything about the countries they're ostensibly covering? If NRO wants coverage of Lebanon, there's no dearth of talent already here in Beirut. Insisting on publishing Smith's fabrications in order to toe an ideological line that pays no heed of Lebanon's complex politics only makes NRO look stupid and dishonest.

If you're interested in NRO's response to similar allegations, you can see that here and here.

UPDATE: Kathryn Jean Lopez, online editor of the National Review has another statement up about Smith (emphasis mine):

With regard to the two posts in question, it is my belief, based on an investigation in which NRO discussed the matter with three independent sources who live and work in Lebanon (as well as other experts in the area), that Smith was probably either spun by his sources or confused about what he saw.

...the context that Smith was operating in an uncertain environment where he couldn't always be sure of what he was witnessing, and the caveats that he filled in the gaps by talking to sources within the Cedar Revolution movement and the Lebanese national-security apparatus, whose claims obviously should have been been treated with the same degree of skepticism as those of anyone with an agenda to advance.

As one of our sources put it: "The Arab tendency to lie and exaggerate about enemies is alive and well among pro-American Lebanese Christians as much as it is with the likes of Hamas." While Smith vouches for his sources, we cannot independently verify what they told him. That's why we're revisiting the posts in question and warning readers to take them with a grain of salt.

So let me get this straight. Lopez publishes Smith's ridiculous posts that betray a fundamental ignorance of Lebanon and the political situation here, posts which were either made up entirely or fed to him by pro-Government forces, and the problem here is the "Arab tendency to lie and exaggerate."

Wow. I almost don't even know where to start with this one. Maybe she should just throw in another couple of lines about America's mission civilisatrice and the white man's burden and be done with it.

In any case, someone should send her message to Tom Harb, a rabid March 14 supporter in the US, who's supporting Smith wholeheartedly (from Florida, no less) and accusing all of the journalists who have contradicted Smith of being on the Hezbollah payroll. Someone should remind him that his neo-conservative comrades in arms at NRO and elsewhere are fair weather friends to whom, at the end of the day, a wog is a wog, regardless of his political usefulness.

I spent this past weekend in the Chouf mountain, otherwise known as the personal fiefdom of Walid Jumblatt. I was looking forward to visiting the Moukhtara and its beautiful castle, and given the tense situation, I was surprised when my friend told me that conforming to Druze tradition, I could go have tea with and briefly meet Jumblatt -- or even ask him for something. Saturday morning is the time when the Moukhtara is open, and all are given tea while they wait for an audience with Walid Bek.

My timing was off, though, because it seems that US ambassador to Lebanon, Jeffrey Feltman, was due to arrive shortly for a lunch with Jumblatt and no amount of wasta with Jumblatt's private security detail was going to get us in.

One thing that bothers me about Lebanon is the checkpoints. They're a hassle, but given the situation, they seem necessary. What really gets to me though are those run by militias. Any journalist covering the south or Bekaa, or even parts of the Dahiye, are familiar with Hezbollah's stops, although I've never personally had to show my ID to anyone from Hezbollah, and despite my frequent trips to and through the sit-in downtown, I've never seen a member of the party armed.

Now March 14 and its allies are fond of complaining about the "state within a state" that is Hezbollah, but what you hear less about are their own states within a state. (Incidentally, I'm not fond of the expression, because in order for it to be true, there'd have to be a state within which to have a state -- something that just isn't true here.) While there are army checkpoints all around the Moukhtara, the guys with machine guns at the gate are PSP militia. They've got neither badge nor uniform -- their gun and the confidence of Walid being their only license for checking my ID. But these are the higher ranked guards, down the street, working at the local mechanic and sitting in a little booth are kids with walkie talkies.

When we decided to take a walk around the Moukhtara, we were immediately stopped by a kid who couldn't have been over 20 years old. I think he was intimidated by us, so when we refused to show any ID and only gave our first names, he called someone else as we were walking away. The second guy was only a little older and looked like he should be working second spatula at a saj stand. But there he was, asking for our ID. My friend looked him in the eye, immediately getting angry, and asked him where his ID was. After some prompting, the young and round boy opened his wallet and flashed a normal ID without letting us take it out or look at it too long. When we asked what gave him the authority to stop us, he lifted his shirt and showed us his walkie talkie. The Chouf, it seems, isn't so different from the south after all.

The rest of my trip, barring an embarrassing run-in with the way-too-friendly (and touchy!) tour guide at Beiteddine, was a welcome change from the city. Like true mountain men, we ate heartily and shot guns, and the clean air cleared my persistent cold right up.

Also, the Cedar reserve reminded me of something out of a fairy tale:

Thanks to those who have sent messages wondering if I was all right and where I was. I took a trip up to the Chouf on Tuesday and spent the night in a village in the mountain. I visited some of the Druze shebab to see how things were and how they were feeling after their unexpected victory over Hezbollah in Barouk.

When I got back to Beirut, what I thought was just a long electricity cut turned out to be several days without power (that's getting fixed while I type, insh'allah). So I've been out of the loop, news and otherwise, and will need some time to wrap my head around things before posting any comments about the situation.

There's also the fact that during the last week, I've not really wanted to do much except sleep. As a result, I didn't get any work done and am now swamped with things that have been left undone up to now.

This seems to be shaping up to be a full-scale coup d'état by Hezbollah with the support of the army. It looks like they're going piece by piece. Future was first, now the PSP is being taken in the Chouf, and I imagine the Lebanese Forces in the Christian sectors will be next.

The rest of the Lebanese parties were no match for Hezbollah, but when you throw in the army, what can you expect? Hariri and Joumblatt seem to have agreed not to fight, probably to save the bloodshed that would not have stopped the coup in any case. So they've agreed to go quietly in exchange for there not being a battle to which Future and PSP partisans would have gone like lambs to the slaughter.

The army seems to have cut a deal with Hezbollah, but it's hard to say what they could have done in any case, since they're so much weaker than the Party of God. So the current government will most likely be forced to resign, Suleiman will be appointed as president, and someone pliable will be appointed to be Prime Minister. Things will be like before 2005, except that instead of taking marching orders from Damascus, the new government will answer to Harat Hreik.

Yesterday, I spent a good part of the day in Hamra, where SSNP thugs were still armed and around. They broke up a group of unarmed neighborhood residents (most of whom were with Future) by shooting in the air and shouting. The night before a 16-year-old boy had been killed while delivering a narguileh for the shop he worked for. When they finally had a hard time getting the group of the boy's friends, family and neighbors to go inside despite plenty of shooting, they left. Shortly afterward, the Army finally showed up. The SSNP gunmen were going around Hamra without any challenge from the Army.

Today, things seem to be much better in West Beirut (although I haven't been there today), but fighting has spread all over the country, with Hezbollah apparently shelling a Druze village and opposition Druze forces fighting the PSP in Aley. Clashes are also going on in in Shweifat.

Add this to the fighting in Tripoli, and the death toll is nearly 40 now. In the words of Yeats:

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Another thing that's been bothering me is the fact that Mostaqbal's media outlets were shut down. I won't pretend that part of me doesn't feel a little tinge of delight at the idea of the Mostaqbal thugs getting some comeuppance. But punishing neighborhood thugs who fancy themselves militiamen is one thing, while shutting down media outlets is another. During the 2006 war, Hezbollah was (rightfully, to my mind) outraged by Israel's targeting of their television station, al-Manar. So why is it acceptable to have shut down Future TV?

I'm watching Kalam an-Nass right now, while the head of Future TV is being interviewed. According to him, a Lebanese soldier, in uniform, told them that they had to open the gates or else they'd be killed by Hezbollah militiamen. This is, of course, disconcerting on several levels. First of all, this would mean that a member of the ostensibly neutral Lebanese Army would have helped Hezbollah shut down the media outlet of a competing political party. But regardless of whether or not a soldier helped Hezbollah shut the station down, the latter certainly did disconnect Future TV. This is scandalous, and Hezbollah should be ashamed of itself.

A woman presenter, whose name I can't recall, just came on and gave Hezbollah a piece of her mind. She said that she's spent the last year and a half doing reports on the lot of the people of the south and how they've suffered during the war of 2006 and after. Then she explained how al-Manar reported that the staff of Future TV "fled" the premises, like thieves or criminals, when in fact they were told to leave if they didn't want to die. She said that forgetting the parties and forgetting politics, this kind of treatment and the occupation of Beirut has made regular people, people like her, hate Hezbollah. She said that after people like her who did their best to take in refugees after the war in 2006 are treated like this and accused of being traitors, Hezbollah should be ashamed of itself. Of course a presenter on Future TV isn't exactly representative of the man on the street, but her point is well taken.

I can say, however, that the opposition has lost the sympathy of people who have supported the principles of the resistance, even if they had really ambivalent feelings about the religious and authoritarian form it's taken. And the traitor rhetoric is really hurtful and disgusting to people who support resistance against Israel but don't want to live in a country where the interests of the resistance trump those of the state. Calling people traitors like this smacks of Bush's rhetoric in the "war on terror," where you're either "with us or against us," and doesn't sit well with many Lebanese.

I never thought I'd say this, but there was part of Samir Geagea's speech this afternoon that I agree with. He said that the use of Hezbollah's weapons has delegitimized their very existence. I tend to agree with this idea, because Hezbollah has decided to use its weapons in an internal dispute between Lebanese actors. (Here, it's important to remember that the myth that Hezbollah has never been part of inter-Lebanese fighting fails to include when Amal and Hezbollah fought each the during the civil war.) What has happened is that the March 14 government made a decision that Hezbollah disagreed with, and in reaction to this, they took up arms and occupied half of Beirut. This means that the weapons whose sole purpose is supposed to deter Israeli aggression and defend Lebanon has been used as a blunt political tool to try to force the government to resign, or at the very least, send it a far-from-subtle message. 

The line being taken by the opposition now (at least as far as the talking heads of al-Manar are concerned) is that Hezbollah has helped the state put down militias (namely Mustaqbal, or the Future movement). This position fails to take into consideration, for example, the fact that there are still armed militia members of Amal and the Syrian Social Nationalist Party walking around West Beirut.

Either armed militias are illegal or they aren't. What's happened is that the Army seems to have passively taken the side of Hezbollah, which means that their legitimacy will be decreased or destroyed in the eyes of other Lebanese communities, especially the Sunnis in Saida and Tripoli. It has also sent the message that the most effective political tool is military force. I imagine, then, that the Sunnis in Saida and Tripoli, the pro-government Christians and the Druze loyal to Walid Jumblatt have likely decided that they can no longer count on the Army to be an impartial arbiter for the state. This will surely lead to increased militia training and arming. It wouldn't surprise me if the lesson that the Lebanese Forces and the PSP have taken from the defeat of Mustaqbal (probably the weakest of the pro-government parties/militias, if one of the nastier ones on a local neighborhood level) is that they should be prepared for more of the same in the not-so-distant future.

So where does this leave us? Despite rumors earlier today, it doesn't look like Saniora, or anyone else, will resign from the government. So what? There's still no president, and the fundamental dysfunction of the Lebanese state has only been highlighted, not solved. If this all ends with Hezbollah and its allied militias pulling back to their territory in the next day or so, leaving a humiliating message for the other parties and their militias, we'll be back to where we started. Back to where we started, except a big part of the population will have lost faith in the idea that Hezbollah and its allies can be dealt with within the norms of a democratic system.

Since there is no way that any of these groups can compete with Hezbollah's military forces, look for them to embrace proxies. This might include the Sunnis accepting al-Qaeda militants and other groups hoping for more Israeli intervention. I'm sure that after the disaster that was the war in 2006, the Israeli establishment wouldn't mind taking advantage of the situation for  rematch. In any case, what this situation hasn't done is foster an atmosphere where either side feels like it can compromise. If anything, this whole situation has pushed March 14 further into its corner and inflated the arrogance and confidence of Hezbollah and its allies in the country and abroad. Neither of which bodes well for peace or stability in Lebanon.

Amin Gemayel, whom I can't stand, called Hezbollah's victory a Pyrrhic one (actually, he said it in French, the snooty bastard). I tend to think that, on a national level and in the long term, he's probably right. In any case, it's enough to turn some Lebanese into bitter Mercutios.

The rumor I've been hearing now, to the glee of some Aounist Christians in my neighborhood, is that Prime Minister Saniora has resigned. I can't confirm this, but it really begs the question of what he would resign from. Premiership of what? There is no government. The military is sitting around doing absolutely nothing, which may be best for the lives of the soldiers but is disastrous for the life of the state. I walked down to the eastern side of the bridge that connects east and west Beirut, and it was being guarded by a couple of tanks and APCs and some soldiers. The latter were sitting around shooting the shit and listening to the radio. One was sleeping in the shadow of his APC. I've also seen it reported that Jumblatt was forced to flee his home in Clemenceau under the protection of the Army.

Despite the fact that the army is much weaker than Hezbollah and would have lost any real shooting match, I keep wondering to myself if one of the reasons the Army is staying out is because of the head of the Army, Michel Suleiman. He had been put forward as a compromise candidate for president. Now that Hezbollah is calling the shots, it will be interesting to see who they put forward as the president, or if they appoint anyone at all.

It obviously won't be Aoun, which means that he's pretty much outlived his usefulness to the opposition cum ruling party, due to the fact that he was only helpful to them so long as they were working within the system. Now that they have taken matters into their own hands, they really don't need him anymore. I don't think that Hezbollah would even try to put someone Franjieh into the presidential palace, so that pretty much only leaves Suleiman. Maybe he cut a deal with Hezbollah to stay out of the fighting in exchange for the presidency.

But even the question of who will be the president may be putting the cart before the horse. It isn't clear at all now what Hezbollah will do. Will there be a fight between the pro-Government Christian militias (Lebanese Forces and Phalangists) and Hezbollah? Will Hezbollah install a new government of its choosing based on the old system? Will they install a government composed purely of Hezbollah members? Will they call for new elections? Your guess is as good as mine.

What's sure though, is this: those who may have have been somewhat sympathetic to the underlying principles of "the Resistance" and Hezbollah's part in that movement despite (being uncomfortable with the idea of an explicitly religious party) are likely to be turned off by the last few days' events. The chorus has always been the Hezbollah would never turn its weapons inward, but it has done that now. At the end of the day, Hezbollah went outside of the rules of the game. That game may have been frustrating and often paralyzing, but at least it was nominally democratic. Now, even if they call for new elections, Hezbollah has broken the rules of the game by resorting to violence to achieve a political goal. A lot of people won't forgive or forget this, and there will be even more people who will never be able to trust the party of God to follow the rules of the (at least nominally) democratic system, because they have, for all intents and purposes, overthrown the government by force.

UPDATE: I just saw Aoun on television assuring viewers that no one would be persecuted. Maybe he didn't get the memo, but Hezbollah seized power without him or his help. He looks more like a remora sucking with all his might to be pulled along with Hezbollah, feasting on what's left of the already feeble Lebanese state.

The war is continuing, but my neighborhood looks like it's any other Saturday morning. The upscale carft shop, L'Artisan du Liban, is apparently open; there is a couple walking a dog; traffic is coming through; and Ethiopian maids are beating carpets and washing windows.

Meanwhile, in Hamra, Hezbollah took all of one night to defeat the Mostaqbal (Future, the pro-government Sunni militia) and take over the area. There are now (much more professional) Hezbollah militiamen running the areas. The Future movement's television channel was shut down, along with its newspaper and radio station. According to my friends, the army and Internal Security Forces (the latter trained by the US and loyal to Future's Hariri) are nowhere to be found.

There had been rumors about Mustaqbal training in the last year or two. I suppose we can put that notion to rest, because it only took a night for them to get their asses handed to them by Hezbollah.

So what now? Jumblatt made this point yesterday, saying that Hezbollah could easily occupy all of Beirut, but then what? I'm wondering what's going to happen to East Beirut. Are the Christians going to (or going to be allowed to) stay out of it all together? Will Hezbollah wait until Mustaqbal has been completely routed and then aim their sites at Christian Lebanese Forces and Phalangists? Will Hezbollah use its new-found posiiton of power to negotiate, or will it just be the government now?

For the moment, I can't tell that we're in a civil war by looking out the window, but had I left work an hour later yesterday, I'd probably be holed up in my office or at friends' watching street fighting all across the neighborhood that has traditionally been the safest place in Beirut.  

UPDATE: Artisan du Liban isn't actually open, but the building it's in is. Besides grocery stores, though, the Mana'eesh places are open, as are the hair salon, antique shop and carpet repair shop by my place. 

Also, it's been pointed out to me that it's Friday today, which goes to show you how much it feels like a Saturday today here.

The garbage men stop coming:

The 8 o'clock news is presented in a flack jacket:

I don't have a picture for this one, but another way you might know that you're in a civil war if there's no more bread at your local stores...

I'm watching Hassan Nasrallah's speech right now on television, and it's very contradictory. One moment he says that this is war and that the government's decision to get rid of their man at the airport and to declare the Party of God's newly discovered independent telecommunications network illegal was a declaration of war. He says that Hezbollah's weapons will never be turned inward, but then he says that he will cut that hand off that tries to touch those weapons. (Here it's important to remember that the telecommunication network has been newly classified as a resistance weapon.) I never thought I'd say this, but Nasrallah kind of reminded me of Rumsfeld today.

Sometimes I wonder if in 1975, people knew that they were in a civil war. I have a feeling that long after the day that we now recognize as the start of the war, many people didn't know they were in one. Everyone's talking about whether or not this means war. Somehow I've got the feeling that we're already in a civil war, but we just haven't realized it yet.

UPDATE: There's something decidedly disconcerting about hearing the RPG explode in the distance right before you hear it on the television. MY neighborhood is calm right now; the opposing Christian factions have so far kept their distance from the fighting, but I can hear automatic gun fire and RPGs in the distance. 1840, 1958, 1975, 2008? Plus ça change...

Raymond Tanter from WINEP and MESH has a post up about why the Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK), the Iranian militants who have committed terrorist attacks against the regime in Teheran and who were hosted by Saddam's Iraq, should be delisted from the State Department's list of terrorist organizations. Besides the fact that the MEK is against the Iranian regime, basically, his argument boils down to the fact that they haven't committed any acts of terrorism for a few years:

On April 25, Patrick Clawson, deputy director of research at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, wrote that designation “should be based only on terrorism issues,” and that State “cited no alleged MEK terrorist activity since 2001, yet have increased allegations pertaining [to] the group’s non-terrorist activities.” Country Reports 2007 continues this trend of making allegations that are irrelevant to terrorist designation.

Tanter attempts to argue that MEK doesn't have the capability to carry out terrorist attacks, whereas we all know that anyone with a back pack, a bus pass and household peroxide can commit an act of terrorism. So while this argument isn't very convincing, he tells us, "de-listing would provide diplomatic leverage over Tehran, as the West is presently failing to constrain the Iranian regime’s nuclear program, sponsorship of terrorism, and subversion of Iraq."

In other words, the US should use a terrorist group for political bargaining. Of course this is nothing new: the Bush family has a long history of using Cuban terrorists to apply pressure on the Castro regime. What's striking, though, is the moral indignation Republicans muster when someone supports talking to groups like Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood and Hezbollah (most of the violence committed by the last group having been aimed at military targets). Charges of moral equivalency and weak knees in the face of terror are immediately brandished.

Well, Orlando Bosch blew up a passenger plane killing all 73 civilians aboard. Jose Dionisio Suarez and Virgilio Paz Romero assassinated the Chilean diplomat Orlando Letelier in Washington. The Mujahedeen-e Khalq assassinated the deputy chief of the Iranian Armed Forces General Staff, Brigadier General Ali Sayyaad Shirazi and attacked Iranian embassies and installations in 13 different countries at the same time. They also bombed the head office of the Islamic Republic Party and the Prime Minister's office killing 70 people, including the Chief Justice, the President and the Prime Minister.

Either terrorism is an acceptable tactic, or it's not. Washington can't understand why the rest of the world sees America as hypocritical, but Tanter's desire for the US to have its cake and eat it too should give us a hunch. 

UPDATE: Thinking more about this today has reminded me of the question of when a group can legitimately be de-listed as a terrorist organization. If the fact that MEK hasn't committed any acts of terrorism since 2001 is really enough to prove that they've mended their ways, then the same ought to apply to Hezbollah as well, because depending on who was responsible for the Argentinean attacks and the kidnapping of Tannenbaum, they haven't committed any acts of terrorism since 2000, the mid-1990s or even the late 1980s.

Otherwise, supporting terrorist groups or rebels or militias in a neighboring country has long been a staple of statecraft. In Africa, Sudan, Chad, Ethiopia, Uganda and Eritrea each support groups in their neighbors' territory. Iran and Syria support Hamas and Hezbollah; Syria supported the PLO in Jordan; while Israel supported the SLA in Lebanon; and Iran trained the Iraqi Badr Brigage to fight against Saddam. Hell, the first car bomb in Iraq wasn't unleashed by Zarqawi, but rather by Iyad Allawi with the help of the CIA. So while I abhor the use of violence against civilians as a political tool, I'm not naive and do know it happens all over. It's the smug hypocrisy of the "War on Terror" that really gets my goat in the same way that the "Fair and Balanced" slogan annoys me way more than the actual Fox News coverage.

McClatchy has an interesting piece on Iranian Brig. Gen. Qassem Suleimani, the head of the Revolutionary Guard's Quds Force. The story includes an awfully high percentage of anonymous sources, and the title might be a little hyperbolic, but I think the overall points made are fair enough.

Iran has a lot of sway in Iraq, which is normal. What's silly, though, is that Americans see this as some sort of meddling, because Iranian interests in Iraq are not always the same as American interests (although I'd argue that they coincide much more often than either side would like to admit). If Iran were occupying Mexico or Canada, you can be sure that the US would be "meddling" as well.

As for the actual article, I don't really have too much to add, except that it's important to look at Iranian involvement in Iraq not as a spoiler or as some diabolical force. If the US is going to come to terms with Middle Eastern players (of which Iran has become a major one, due in no small part to American intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq), Washington is going to have to look at Teheran (and Damascus and Hezbollah and Hamas, for that matter) as actors who have interests in the region that can't be run over roughshod by America.

This is a reality. So just as when one deals with Zimbabwe, it's necessary to take Pretoria into account, or how when dealing with Burma or North Korea one can't ignore Beijing, the road to peace in Iraq must necessarily pass through Teheran, but not in the way that American hawks would like it to.

I'd like to offer a solution to the political impasse as presented by a friend of mine in Paris. I've translated it into English for the Anglophone audience, but the original can be found in the comments of the previous post:


The example of Lebanon inspires new political choices for me which consist of fighting to eliminate the presidential office. The revolution did not finish the job; it was necessary to cut off the head of the state; the only president of this country will remain a cheese.



I also think that since Lebanon can't find itself a capable man to rally all the parties behind him, it's making a recruiting error, for because this man doesn't exist, it's necessary to widen the recruitment to other species: animals, vegetables or maybe an object, a machine, something that symbolizes Lebanon, a new totem.

The list is long. What do you think about an octopus, a cedar, a Mercedes, a 4x4, a fork, a chick pea or a lubbia?

I know that N has a preference for donkeys, and maybe that isn't such a bad idea. It's a hardy animal that can carry heavy loads upon its shoulders without ever complaining.

I think you guys need a donkey. It's a noble animal that we must reclaim. Furthermore, that would allow the beginning of a new collection of stickers for parties and colors. I'll trade you my Hezbollah donkey for your Lebanese Forces carrot.

I don't know if my modest contribution will allow the country to get out of this crisis, but if you think it's useful, spread the word, because we never know, the world's going crazy, so let's take it at its word and enjoy it.

The conservative blogosphere is full of armchair quarterbacks and Middle East "experts" (see comments) who are fond of telling us about Arab propaganda and accusing the "MSM" of toeing the "terrorist" line. So from time to time, it's a good idea to drop in on the Israeli side of the beat:

Today's memo from the Israel Defense Forces censorship office:

1. Real-time reports on the exact locations of rocket hits are strictly prohibited. Reports, on delayed-time, of exact locations must always be approved by the IDF Censor.

2. The IDF Censor will not authorize reports of rocket hits at IDF bases and/or strategic installations.

3. The IDF Censor will not authorize reporting on rockets that fell into the Mediterranean Sea.

4. The IDF Censor will not authorize photographs of rockets with identifying marks.

5. The IDF Censor will not authorize reports regarding visits by senior Israel Government officials and IDF officer in southern Israel.

6. The IDF Censor will not authorize information on exploded terrorist ordinance or any other malfunctioning ordinance.

7. Panoramic, wide-angle, etc. photographs of rocket hits are strictly prohibited.

Please ensure that all staff members are aware of the foregoing.

The foregoing does not obviate the obligation to submit to the IDF Censor – prior to publication – of any news item regarding rocket hits or any other subject that must be approved by the IDF Censor.

When complaining about a militant guerilla organization's restrictions on reporting, I think it's only fair to recall that the other side actually has a censorship office.

Sometimes I forget that I live by the sea. It's easy enough to do, what with Beirut traffic, honking horns and the city's urban brown and grey. Usually, I'm reminded by a glimpse of the Mediterranean from Ras Beirut, which sometimes prompts me to take a stroll on the corniche to smell the water.

Today, however, I was reminded by a taxi driver talking about the USS Cole, the US carrier that was attacked in Yemen and has now been deployed off the coast of Lebanon. No one I talked to today thought that the ship would actually do anything. Everyone seemed to agree that it was just a show of force by the US.

One Hezbollah partisan from Saida told me that if there were a war and the USS Cole was involved, it would be sunk. Then again, he also told me that he thought the Party of God would not only defeat Israel again this summer but also destroy the Jewish state. (I had to stop myself from laughing when he spoke of Hezbollah's 1 million troops, which would make up one in every four Lebanese citizens.)

In any case, no one seemed excited about the ship's presence in the area. A colleague of mine, an American-Lebanese Christian mother of four who supports March 14, also told me that she thought it was a bad idea.

At the end of the day, I think we've already got enough saber rattling here, and adding the noise of an additional and enormous American saber to the mix is probably the last thing we need here. Ironically, however, the US Navy's stated rationale for the deployment is stability. 

Hassan Nasrallah spoke this week, making this disconcerting remark:

I tell the shallow minds in Lebanon, who speak about war and peace decisions, that Israel is the only side that has been taking the decision of war or peace. The decision that we take is our legitimate, moral, humane and natural right in order to defend our people, land and country at a time of negligence by the government and the world.

While this is true to a limited extent, there are times when it takes two to tango, and now is one of those times. We know that the assassination of Mughniyeh was an escalation in the region, but we also know that there's a very high chance that if/when Hezbollah retaliates against Israel, Israel will attack Lebanon again.

Many Hezbollah partisans argue that it's their "right" to retaliate and generally agree that Israel would react to an assassinated ambassador, for example, with an attack on Lebanon. They have a tougher time, however, answering my question as to whether or not exercising their "right" to retaliate is worth plunging the country into another war.

Likewise, when I ask whether the rest of the country (as opposed to just the cadres of Hezbollah) ought not have a say in such a decision, these partisans generally insist (with an obstinate attitude that certainly is representative of Lebanese politics) that they do represent the whole country.

During the July war, one could still plausibly say that the brutal Israeli reaction was unexpected. In 2008, however, almost no one seems to doubt what the consequences of retaliation against Israel would mean for Lebanon. Regardless of whether or not another Israeli war would be legitimate, it certainly won't be unexpected. And I haven't been able to find anyone who's willing to come out and say that avenging the assassination of Mughniyeh is worth the lives of another thousand Lebanese people.

In another bid to see who can talk up Imad Mughniyeh the most as super terrorist extraordinaire (which was, until recently, mainly a contest between Hezbollah and Israel), an-Nahar's English-language site is now claiming that he was, in fact, responsible for the founding of the Mehdi Army in Iraq. While I'm no expert on the Mehdi Army, this claim seems more than a little over the top to me.

I'm just waiting to hear the news that Mughniyeh was also responsible for Pearl Harbor and all those bombings in Corsica and Spanish Basque country.

For a much more sober, and informed, view of the situation, I recommend this Newshour interview with Mohamad Bazzi and Robert Baer.

I've been missing in action for a while, even after my trip to Ethiopia, which I'll have a lot more on later.

Since I've been back, however, a lot has happened. Imad Mughniya was killed in a car bomb in Damascus (shortly after Michael Totten said I was one of the "notorious leftists who endlessly excuses Hezbollah" and accused me of spreading propaganda when I mentioned that car bombs were used by the American side as well in the comments here). Yesterday was the third anniversary of Hariri's assassination. And finally, there was just a small earthquake (more of a tremor, really) here in Beirut.

I don't have much to say about the first topic, but I will say that I always feel uncomfortable with any kind of extra-judicial killing and assassination, no matter whom it's done by. Also, this seems to be either a very serious breach of Syrian security or evidence that Damascus gave the Israelis or Americans the ok to carry out the attack as part of a larger deal. In any case, it signals an escalation between Hezbollah and Israel, so it wouldn't surprise me if there's an external (outside of Lebanon and Israel) attack against Israeli (or even American) interests. After all, the 1992 Israeli embassy bombing in Argentina was retaliation for the assassination of Hezbollah Secretary General Abbas al-Musawi, who was replaced by Nasrallah. Such escalation is always a bad thing for all parties involved.

As for the February 14 event, I went downtown to give it a look as Geagea was speaking, and it wasn't too big, although I didn't show up until about noon. One big reason for this was that it was rainy and cold. I was a bit worried about clashes arising last night between mourners of Hariri and Mughniya, but the cold rain was probably a blessing in disguise in that it's hard to get riled up to go out looking for trouble when you're soaking wet.

Finally, the earthquake: I didn't feel it, but I heard a rumble. All of my colleagues seem to have felt it, which might just mean that I'm insensitive, so to speak.

It's just occurred to me that there aren't very many places in the world where I could post about an earthquake, a car bomb and a protest against an assassination in the same piece. How's that for potpourri, Alex Trebek?

Back July 2006, Israel was "just defending itself" while laying waste to Lebanon after the capture of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah. However Israel is mystified when two rockets are fired from the South of Lebanon into Israeli territory this week. To hear Haaretz tell it, those rockets just came out of the blue for no good reason:

Earlier Tuesday, Israel filed a severe complaint with the United Nations Security Council and with Ban over the Katyusha firing.

The rockets struck the western Galilee town of Shlomi early Tuesday morning, causing no injuries. One of the rockets lightly damaged a house, and the second hit a street in the twon. Army Radio reported that the second rocket damaged an electricity pole.

The complaint called the rocket fire a severe violation of Security Council Resolution 1701, which brought the Second Lebanon War to an end.

According to the complaint, the rocket fire was additional evidence the resolution has yet to be fully implemented and therefore there is still a threat to Israel...

In the whole article there isn't a single mention of the shepherd Fadi Ahmad Abdel Aal, who was kidnapped the day before by the IDF:

The Israeli military said it had detained a man crossing the border with Lebanon.

"During an IDF (Israeli army) activity a suspect was identified crossing the Blue Line into Israel. He was arrested inside Israel and has been taken in for questioning," an Israeli army spokeswoman said.

She declined to give the suspect's nationality but said he was not Israeli.

However, a Lebanese security source told AFP the Israeli soldiers had abducted a man they named as Fadi Ahmad Abdel Aal inside Lebanon and "brought him inside Israel with them.

"The soldiers made an incursion of 100 metres (yards) to reach agricultural land where they found the shepherd," the source said on condition of anonymity.

The UN peacekeeping force said it had been informed of the incident by the Israeli military.

"UNIFIL has been informed by the IDF that they have apprehended a Lebanese citizen and we are in contact with them in order to resolve the situation as soon as possible," UNIFIL spokeswoman Yasmina Bouziane told AFP.

Israeli forces have in the past seized Lebanese shepherds along the border and taken them for questioning over possible links with Hezbollah militants. They are usually released after questioning.

So let's just recap here: in 2006, two Israeli soldiers are captured by Hezbollah, and that warrants a month-long spasm of bombs that killed over 1,000 civilians. This week, a Lebanese shepherd is "detained" (not to say kidnapped) by the IDF, and when two rockets are fired into Israel resulting in no casualties, this is "evidence" that "there is still a threat to Israel."

When it comes to Israel, what's good for the goose, it seems, is not good for the gander.

I generally try to stay away from the National Review. This explains why I didn't see the inane and meretricious "reporting" done by W. Thomas Smith Jr. until today. I've commented here before on ridiculous and sensationalist accounts of Lebanon, but this guy really takes the cake. Smith wrote last September:

Hezbollah is rehearsing for something big here. Not sure what or when. But a few days ago, between 4,000 and 5,000 HezB gunmen deployed to the Christian areas of Beirut in an unsettling “show of force,” positioning themselves at road intersections and other key points throughout the city.

It just so happens that I live on the East side of town in one of the "Christian areas of Beirut," and I can guarantee that Smith's account is laughably untrue. On the day that Smith says Hezbollah "deployed" to East Beirut, I was doing some shopping. I live on the border of Gemmayzeh and Mar Mkhail and went to Sassine and ABC that day (all of which are Christian neighborhoods), and rest assured, there were no Hezbollah militants, much less armed ones, to be seen anywhere.  Had what he described been true, there would most likely have been a civil war, or at the very least isolated street fighting. As it was, not only was there no fighting, but not a single journalist in Beirut, foreign or Lebanese, picked up on Hezbollah's alleged "show of force." There's a very simple reason for this: it never happened. If Hezbollah were to deploy a dozen armed militants to Achrafieh, that would be crossing one of Lebanon's red lines. Saying that there were 4,000-5,000 gunmen here is beyond farfetched; it's in the realm of the outlandishly comic. 

I've had neither the time, nor the stomach, to wade through all of this guy's Lebanon "coverage," but the few pieces I've opened are risible in their ridiculousness. Here's another example:

Hezbollah are not the only terrorists operating here in Lebanon: There are also Al Qaeda affiliates like Fatah Al Islam (they were not totally wiped out at Nahr al Bared), as well as Jund al Sham (Soldiers of Damascus), Jundallah, Hamas, and — though few Americans are aware of this — operating elements of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps on the Lebanese side of the Lebanese-Syrian border. These are just a few of the problem groups here: All operating under the auspices of Hezbollah.

Despite his mistranslation of "Sham," which in this context means Greater Syria (Syria, Lebanon and Palestine) and not Damascus, this little excerpt is absurd in that it explicitly says that all of the al-Qaeda-affiliated groups operating in the Palestinian camps, as well as Hamas and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard are "operating under the auspices of Hezbollah." First of all, no one knows who is connected to the various groups operating in the Palestinian camps. And second of all, anyone who believes that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard is "under the auspices" of Hezbollah, and not the other way around, obviously knows nothing about either organization.

Smith's scattergun approach to various armed groups in Lebanon is symptomatic of a larger, mostly American, approach to the Middle East, where al-Qaeda equals Hezbollah equals Hamas equals al Qaeda in Iraq equals Jund al-Sham ,etc. This is the kind of thinking that led most Americans to believe that Baghdad had something to do with 9/11 and leaves the defenders of the free world (see also: Reyes and Sarkozy) incapable of distinguishing between Sunnis and Shi'a.

Another fun read is this post, in which Smith brags about doing "reconnaissance" in the Dahiye, the suburbs where Hezbollah is based in Beirut. Or rather this would be funny if it were a satire and I were reading it to friends in Beirut. This guy seems to think that he's in a Chuck Norris movie, which would be fine except for a couple of things. First, this "journalism," in which Smith writes about spying on Hezbollah for pro-Government groups not only makes him sound like a macho asshole, it also casts a shadow of doubt on legitimate journalism done by actual reporters in a country where foreign correspondents are already viewed with an air of suspicion. Second, it makes Beirut sound like a war zone, which it's clearly not.

And then there's this gem. According to Smith, there were "some 200-plus heavily armed Hezbollah militiamen — positioned between the parliament and the Serail." As it happens, I've spent a fair amount of time downtown, and this is not the first time I've written about Americans talking about the sit-in protest without knowing what they're talking about. For the last few months, it's been hard to find more than a couple of dozen people at the protest, much less hundreds of armed militants. I have never, I repeat: never, seen any Hezbollah weapons downtown. They may have them down there, but if they do, they're hidden so well that someone who regularly strolls through the camp would not see them. To suggest that he surprised 200 armed militants out in the open while driving over the bridge that connects East and West Beirut is ridiculous.   

Finally, Jack Bauer -- I mean W. Thomas Smith Jr. -- gives us a post from an "undisclosed neighborhood":

Lebanon is extremely dangerous for Americans right now. In fact, some top officials within the 1559 Committee (essentially the heart and soul of the Cedars Revolution ... for a free Lebanon) believe some sort of dramatic terrorist event is going to take place here in Lebanon between now and mid-October. This is not a gut feeling, but a calculation based on intelligence analysis and chatter from the street.

Tony Nissi, the 1559 Committee chief here in Beirut (whom you'll recall from previous entries), has reason to believe Hezbollah knows who I am. So I am deliberately not staying in hotels: Instead, I'm spending nights in friends' houses — safe houses if you will — and always with bodyguards.

This one is the funniest of the bunch. If there are only half of the number of Americans in Lebanon now as there were during the July war, there'd still be over 10,000 Americans here, myself included. Beirut is decidedly not unsafe for Americans, unless of course they decide to go play G.I. Joe by arming themselves and doing "reconnaissance." But even if Smith were to get picked up by Hezbollah or the Army for spying (which is basically what he claims he's doing), they'd immediately recognize him for the  buffoon that he plainly is. He sounds more like a hapless character out of a Harry Mathews novel than an actual spy, or, God forbid, a journalist.

I could go on for pages about the factual inaccuracy of Smith's reports, but it would just be more of the same. It's amazing to me that NRO published any of Smith's "reports." They are so obviously bullshit that someone must have been asleep at the wheel over there. One of my pet peeves is the writing of partisan hacks who only travel for rhetorical flair, and Smith seems to be more of the same. The difference is that his case is so egregious that he's getting called out on it. There are well respected journalists here in Lebanon and elsewhere who not only know the country intimately but are good writers to boot. Anthony Shadid, Annia Ciezadlo and Mohamad Bazzi are only a few of the names that come to mind. So why is there a need to send Chuck Norris wannabe hacks like Smith who evidently don't know anything about the countries they're ostensibly covering? If NRO wants coverage of Lebanon, there's no dearth of talent already here in Beirut. Insisting on publishing Smith's fabrications in order to toe an ideological line that pays no heed of Lebanon's complex politics only makes NRO look stupid and dishonest.

If you're interested in NRO's response to similar allegations, you can see that here and here.

UPDATE: Kathryn Jean Lopez, online editor of the National Review has another statement up about Smith (emphasis mine):

With regard to the two posts in question, it is my belief, based on an investigation in which NRO discussed the matter with three independent sources who live and work in Lebanon (as well as other experts in the area), that Smith was probably either spun by his sources or confused about what he saw.

...the context that Smith was operating in an uncertain environment where he couldn't always be sure of what he was witnessing, and the caveats that he filled in the gaps by talking to sources within the Cedar Revolution movement and the Lebanese national-security apparatus, whose claims obviously should have been been treated with the same degree of skepticism as those of anyone with an agenda to advance.

As one of our sources put it: "The Arab tendency to lie and exaggerate about enemies is alive and well among pro-American Lebanese Christians as much as it is with the likes of Hamas." While Smith vouches for his sources, we cannot independently verify what they told him. That's why we're revisiting the posts in question and warning readers to take them with a grain of salt.

So let me get this straight. Lopez publishes Smith's ridiculous posts that betray a fundamental ignorance of Lebanon and the political situation here, posts which were either made up entirely or fed to him by pro-Government forces, and the problem here is the "Arab tendency to lie and exaggerate."

Wow. I almost don't even know where to start with this one. Maybe she should just throw in another couple of lines about America's mission civilisatrice and the white man's burden and be done with it.

In any case, someone should send her message to Tom Harb, a rabid March 14 supporter in the US, who's supporting Smith wholeheartedly (from Florida, no less) and accusing all of the journalists who have contradicted Smith of being on the Hezbollah payroll. Someone should remind him that his neo-conservative comrades in arms at NRO and elsewhere are fair weather friends to whom, at the end of the day, a wog is a wog, regardless of his political usefulness.

I spent this past weekend in the Chouf mountain, otherwise known as the personal fiefdom of Walid Jumblatt. I was looking forward to visiting the Moukhtara and its beautiful castle, and given the tense situation, I was surprised when my friend told me that conforming to Druze tradition, I could go have tea with and briefly meet Jumblatt -- or even ask him for something. Saturday morning is the time when the Moukhtara is open, and all are given tea while they wait for an audience with Walid Bek.

My timing was off, though, because it seems that US ambassador to Lebanon, Jeffrey Feltman, was due to arrive shortly for a lunch with Jumblatt and no amount of wasta with Jumblatt's private security detail was going to get us in.

One thing that bothers me about Lebanon is the checkpoints. They're a hassle, but given the situation, they seem necessary. What really gets to me though are those run by militias. Any journalist covering the south or Bekaa, or even parts of the Dahiye, are familiar with Hezbollah's stops, although I've never personally had to show my ID to anyone from Hezbollah, and despite my frequent trips to and through the sit-in downtown, I've never seen a member of the party armed.

Now March 14 and its allies are fond of complaining about the "state within a state" that is Hezbollah, but what you hear less about are their own states within a state. (Incidentally, I'm not fond of the expression, because in order for it to be true, there'd have to be a state within which to have a state -- something that just isn't true here.) While there are army checkpoints all around the Moukhtara, the guys with machine guns at the gate are PSP militia. They've got neither badge nor uniform -- their gun and the confidence of Walid being their only license for checking my ID. But these are the higher ranked guards, down the street, working at the local mechanic and sitting in a little booth are kids with walkie talkies.

When we decided to take a walk around the Moukhtara, we were immediately stopped by a kid who couldn't have been over 20 years old. I think he was intimidated by us, so when we refused to show any ID and only gave our first names, he called someone else as we were walking away. The second guy was only a little older and looked like he should be working second spatula at a saj stand. But there he was, asking for our ID. My friend looked him in the eye, immediately getting angry, and asked him where his ID was. After some prompting, the young and round boy opened his wallet and flashed a normal ID without letting us take it out or look at it too long. When we asked what gave him the authority to stop us, he lifted his shirt and showed us his walkie talkie. The Chouf, it seems, isn't so different from the south after all.

The rest of my trip, barring an embarrassing run-in with the way-too-friendly (and touchy!) tour guide at Beiteddine, was a welcome change from the city. Like true mountain men, we ate heartily and shot guns, and the clean air cleared my persistent cold right up.

Also, the Cedar reserve reminded me of something out of a fairy tale: