The Price of Freedom from Syrian Occupation...

The rewards of freedom eh?

A few short months ago, many in the West, not least those camp authoritarians the self-styled 'muscular liberals', were celebrating an apparent popular uprising of the Lebanese people which led to the final withdrawal of Syrian troops from the country.

The country had been significantly rebuilt under former President Rafik Hariri, and the Syrians apparent assassination of 'Mr Lebanon' had been the final straw. Just as he stood poised to lead a return to power for the band of practical men and women with whom he had played such a key part in reinvigorating the Lebanese economy and creating a climate fit for inward investment. Hariri's achievements saw the country feted by publications as diverse as the Wall Street Journal and Wallpaper as the next big thing in investment terms. A colossal missed opportunity was once again open for business. Then someone blew him up.

But the Lebanese people stood firm, revolted by this act of barbarism - whether perpetrated in fact by Syria or by its increasingly unruly proxies in the South of Lebanon - or indeed by other factions altogether.

This was a process of re-birth. It was a case of tentative steps on the path toward a new democracy. Even the muscular liberals raised their T-Shirts in glee and gazed lecherously at this sexy new member of the progressive club, while talking fantastically, ar at any rate with forked tongues, about 'Region change'

After decades of civil war and occupation Lebanon was starting to rise again.

The link at the top of this post is to a Harry's Place comment on this period - it appears that the answer to the placard in the doctored photo asking 'Syria, Who's next?' is 'YOU ARE'

And the price of freedom from Syrian occupation is apparently Israel destroying your state infrastructure (and in particular your civilian transport infrastructure) just as you struggle toward becoming an independent state.

Lebanon never got the chance to control Hizbollah because Israel destroyed its authority first.

Yes it did not have the authority now, but it had only just thrown out a foreign occupier for the first time in over 20 years.

It was given no time to become a viable state.

Walid Jumblatt is a man of Lebanon no less bloody than some of the men of Israel with whom he has shared several decades of mutually destructive conflict, he is also no friend of Syria - in fact in 2005 US and muscular liberal critics were holding him up as middle eastern democracy's latest herald of change - see Jumblatt: Iraq is the start of a new Arab world

But this morning Jumblatt was drawing different parallels, between Israel's treatment of Lebanon vis Hizbollah and of the PLO and Fatah vis Hamas and then most recently of the Palestinian Authority vis Hamas. Jumblatt argued that Israel's key interest was to destroy any regional authority other than its own. The Palestinians must be kept from maturing toward responsible democracy, Lebanon must be stopped in its economic tracks, its EU-funded infrastructure destroyed, its reopening US investment banks scared off. What asked Jumblatt would anyone else in the region do except seek to make Israel pay a similar price?

Let us be clear, the bombing of Lebanon's ports, viaducts, highways and international airport are nothing to do with two captured soldiers. This was a plan that was ready to roll, awaiting a trigger, the most tenuous of justifications which could offer the hypocritical grandmasters of the Great Game a last shot at changing the balance of power in the middle east.

The key question now has once again become, what will Syria do? Is Syria strong enough to act or will it feel rather that its long-term power and viability as a state and regional power-broker is enhanced by staying its hand.

The logic says Syria will wait - sit back saying 'we told you so' as Israel writes a harsh message for Lebanon - 'without a powerful occupier, you are nothing'. But a shocked Arab and wider Moslem world is hearing that message too. The notion that Syrian inaction should be praised is a horrible folly, for all that Syrian action would ignite World War 3 - or at least Gulf War 2.5

To praise Syria inaction is to tell the Lebanese that they have no right to independence, to legitimise the failure of their state. It is neither accidental nor ironic that it is in Israel's interests to make Syria the arbiter, for by doing so Israel asks the question, of America and others, 'When will you deal with Syria?' or as George puts it 'get Syria to stop (Hizbollah) doing this shit'.

This is a high stakes game and it is by no means certain that Syria would not consider an attack on Israel were it not for internal dissent and a percieved lack of Arab League backing -motivated not least by self-interest - as noone wants Israel bombing their infrastructure and civilian population next. This is fine for the Grandmasters, this is fine for the despots - this is the brutalised realpolitik that keeps people's enslaved to despots and stifles democracy in the middle east. How ironic is it that Israel has just attacked the region's only two other peacefully elected democratic governments - for all that the Palestinians will correct us by pointing out their (mutual) state of war.

Tony and George's inadvertently overheard conversation tells us one thing only- that the people of the middle east don't matter and that the Great Game is still just that.

The Lebanese I have spoken to this week take a different view and are disgusted that the first reaction of the British government was not to call for a ceasefire and for Israel to stop killing innocent civilians and destroying civilian infrastructure but rather to talk of evacuating another generation of those who can leave Lebanon - so that Israel's morally repugnant promise to knock the country back 20 years can be allowed to come to pass.