Misimpressions about Lebanon

BEIRUT – Well, the oafs at Lit­tle Green Foot­balls are at it again. Of course, they never stopped. But it gives me a chance to point out the sheer wrong­ness of their world­view and clear up some wrong ideas about Lebanon. At the end of the day, we all learn some­thing, right?

Any­way, LGF is warn­ing that Lebanon is hang­ing in the bal­ance with Hezbollah’s com­ing putsch against the American-friendly Sin­iora gov­ern­ment. Now, like a bro­ken clock, even blovi­at­ing idiots can be right now and then assum­ing they talk enough, but the LGF’s com­menters of course blow it:

There should be some way to get Lebanese Chris­tians out of there before it’s too late.

I have a cou­ple of frends, Lebanese Chris­tians, that still have fam­ily there. I hope they get out before it’s too late.

The Chris­t­ian city dwellers will rue the day they let these sav­ages immi­grate. (not sure what this means… — CA)

The Chris­tians in Beirut have been whistling past the graveyard.

Chris­tians are being heav­ily per­se­cuted in most of the mus­lim coun­tries, with the worst in the ME. Per​se​cu​tion​.com has lots of infor­ma­tion about it.

Lebanon

In 1968 70% Christian.

In 2006 45% Christian.

The gain was almost all for the mus­lims; the pales­tin­ian tsunami.

Such com­ments always inspire in me a Lou Reed-size world-weary sigh. Yes, it’s all so sim­ple: evil Mus­lims, per­se­cuted Christians.

Except, it’s com­pletely wrong.

Hezbollah’s strongest ally in its push to top­ple the gov­ern­ment is … Chris­t­ian. It’s the Free Patri­otic Move­ment headed by Maronite politi­cian Michel Aoun, a man who’s so obsessed with being Pres­i­dent that he will ally with the peo­ple who work for his old enemy: Syria.

And the Free Patri­otic Move­ment is sup­ported by — by some esti­mates — up to 70 per­cent of Lebanon’s Chris­tians. The rest fall mainly into Samir Geagea’s camp, the Lebanese Forces, a party/militia that owes traces it its pede­gree to the Hitler Youth of the 1930s. (No won­der the LGF ogres like it.)

This cur­rent polit­i­cal fight here has very lit­tle to do with Chris­t­ian vs. Mus­lims. Instead, it’s a fight between a pro-Syrian bloc (Hezbol­lah, Amal, FPM and a few smaller par­ties) and an anti-Syrian bloc (Future Move­ment, Lebanese Forces and Pro­gres­sive Social­ist Party). And this split in the Lebanese polit­i­cal soci­ety mir­rors the greater strug­gle for the Mid­dle East: the con­test for influ­ence between the United States and the Islamic Repub­lic of Iran.

There’s lot more to say about this — I’ve writ­ten about it before here and here — but I’m on dead­line. More later, if possible.

Oh, and com­ments are still fubar’ed. Still try­ing to fix that.

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