Cap In Hand
Lebanon, still seething from the aftermath of the Israeli-Hezbollah confrontation is desperately seeking international assistance to re-build its destroyed infrastructure, to regain its confidence, to offer its long-suffering people once more the opportunity to look to the future, to rebuild their expectations and those of their country. Unfortunately, it isn't as though they've survived a war of occupation and the enemy has departed leading to a breathing opportunity for retrenchment, restructuring.The enemy is still there. Sheik Nasrallah claims that Lebanon remains viable, has not fully erupted yet into a full state of siege and civil war because of "the patriotic feelings of the opposition and its desire to preserve civil peace". How's that for chutzpa? How's that for hypocrisy? How's that for speaking with a forked tongue? Hezbollah, long aspiring to complete control of Lebanon as Iran's proxy, to install a Shia-inspired theocracy, impatient with its former role within the governing council is militarily agitating for the resignation of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora.
Destabilization of the country is Hezbollah's goal. Patriotic feelings? As though they give a damn for the safety and security of the population. The people are mere pawns to a larger agenda. Hezbollah tried it arse-backwards this past summer, challenging Israel to war and bringing the IDF into Lebanon to visit true misery on Lebanon. Then they resorted to assassination of their most visible critic. The tactics now are to unseat the alliance government and take complete power. And the Lebanese will recognize the inevitable, that their secular-ruled country will be utterly transformed.
The Lebanese army has taken a break from observation and is struggling now to contain the casually at-war factions in the streets of Beirut. The well-armed and trained Hezbollah militiamen facing off against the unarmed but equally determined government supporters. There have been many wounded, a handful killed, complete routing of law and order, normal commerce and street life. "They fought Israel and now they have turned their guns on us" stated a street-fighting Sunni. "The Shia are my enemy and I'm prepared to kill them because they are trying to kill us."
How reassuringly comfortable for the average Lebanese citizen in whose memory the ravages of civil war still burns.
And there is Prime Minister Siniora in France pleading for economic assistance to rebuild his country. Saudi Arabia, The U.S., France, Britain, Kuwait and Brazil, along with many other countries and the World Bank have stepped forward to help Lebanon work toward "economic progress and social justice" according to French President Jacques Chirac. It is in everyone's best interests, not only the Lebanese, that this country recover itself and combat its inner enemies.
Yet the Party of God claims it has the political, popular and organizational strenth to bring down the government, according to Sheik Nasrallah - and it intends to do just that. "We have not exhausted our options. The next moves will be stronger and more effective."
Is he considering recommending to his friend Ahmadinejad that Beirut be bombed into submission?
Labels: Middle East
posted by Pieface @ Friday, January 26, 2007
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