“My lat­est col­umn from Spot-on”:http://www.spot-on.com/archives/allbritton/2007/08/aint_nothing_but_a_family_thin.html:

Lebanon of late has been seized by what, in the West, is a rou­tine func­tion of democ­racy: a spe­cial elec­tion. And how the coun­try han­dles the Aug. 5 event, which has blown up into the lat­est cri­sis, is quite telling.
But first, some back­ground. Lebanon’s a com­pli­cated polit­i­cal place and its insider pol­i­tics have wider impli­ca­tions beyond its own small ter­ri­tory. These pol­i­tics have deep roots, based on dynas­ties and war­lordism, and the old fam­i­lies — which would be called “mafia” in less polite cir­cles — that run this place believe that this democ­racy busi­ness, grafted on some­what awk­wardly after the end of the French Man­date in the 1940s, should ensure that seats to which peo­ple are “elected” should be kept in the fam­ily.
The elec­tion dis­pute brings this into sharp focus, revolv­ing around the dis­trict of Metn, a Chris­t­ian enclave in the hills north of Beirut. One of its rep­re­sen­ta­tives in par­lia­ment was Pierre Gemayel, who was assas­si­nated last Novem­ber by an ambush in the street. He was also the Indus­try min­is­ter, one of the youngest mem­bers of par­lia­ment and solidly in the pro-Western fac­tion that con­trols the gov­ern­ment here in Beirut. His death was a major blow to the so-called March 14 alliance as the coali­tion of Druze, Sunni Mus­lims and about half the country’s Chris­tians has but a slen­der major­ity in Par­lia­ment and in the cab­i­net. If just a few more pro-government par­lia­men­tar­i­ans die or resign, the pro-Westerners will lose their major­ity in Par­lia­ment and the gov­ern­ment will fall.
And for many peo­ple here in Lebanon, that’s the goal. The oppo­si­tion forces, led by the Shi’ite mil­i­tant group Hezbol­lah and sup­ported by Syria and Iran, take a decid­edly anti-government, anti-U.S. and anti-Western stance. The oppo­si­tion also, curi­ously, includes the Free Patri­otic Move­ment, sup­ported by the other half of the country’s Chris­tians and headed by Maronite Chris­t­ian and for­mer Gen. Michel Aoun, one of Lebanon’s most con­tro­ver­sial fig­ures.
Bear with me on this digres­sion; it’s impor­tant. Aoun is by all accounts a national hero, an unbal­anced mega­lo­ma­niac and, if he gets his way, the future pres­i­dent. At the tail end of the vicious 1975 – 90 civil war, Aoun was appointed prime min­is­ter of a care­taker mil­i­tary gov­ern­ment by none other than Amin Gemayel, the slain Indus­try minister’s father, who was the out­go­ing pres­i­dent then and no con­sen­sus could be reached on who should suc­ceed him. Aoun seized the oppor­tu­nity and in 1989 declared a “war of lib­er­a­tion” against the Syr­i­ans then occu­py­ing most of Lebanon. By 1990, he had received the sup­port of Sad­dam Hus­sein (who bore no great love for the rival Ba’ath dic­ta­tor­ship in Dam­as­cus) and this proved to be his undo­ing. When the U.S. went to war against Sad­dam in 1990, Amer­ica let it be known that Syria could have Lebanon if it would ally against Iraq. And so, Syr­ian jets drove the gen­eral from the pres­i­den­tial palace and into a 15-year exile in France. He didn’t return to Lebanon until May 2005, fol­low­ing the retreat of the Syr­i­ans after a 29-year pres­ence here.
So who is run­ning to replace the late Pierre Gemayel as the Metn MP? His father, Amin, of course, the very man who appointed Aoun as Prime Min­is­ter back in 1988.
In a some­what unprece­dented chal­lenge to Lebanese tra­di­tions of “hered­i­tary elected offices,” Aoun — who is some­times called Nap­o­lAOUN” for his mes­siah com­plex — is run­ning one of his own can­di­dates, upset­ting the apple cart and split­ting Lebanon’s Chris­t­ian com­mu­nity even deeper. “In Lebanon, we don’t have laws, we have ethics,” said the pro-Western son of a promi­nent Shi’ite politi­cian to me the other night as we dis­cussed the Aoun-Gemayel spat in Metn. “It is not right that he tries to take the seat from the father.“
The Maronite Patri­arch, kind of a local-level pope with an almost equal level of influ­ence among Maronite Chris­tians has also called for Aoun not to con­test the elec­tion and stop divid­ing the Chris­tians. “The Lebanese are used to let­ting emo­tions pre­vail over legit­i­mate rights in sit­u­a­tions like this, par­tic­u­larly tragic sit­u­a­tions,” he said.
This casual atti­tude toward the hold­ing of elec­tions should dis­tress any­one who claims to believe in and desire democ­racy in gen­eral and for Lebanon in par­tic­u­lar. And it should really dis­tress the Bush admin­is­tra­tion, which has pointed to Lebanon’s “Cedar Rev­o­lu­tion” of 2005 as a win in its desire to pro­mote free­dom and democ­racy through­out the Mid­dle East as an anti­dote to extrem­ism. But now, the very fac­tions allied to the United States are look­ing to scut­tle a demo­c­ra­tic elec­tion, all in the name of pre­vent­ing a fur­ther “split” within one of Lebanon’s sects. Well, I’m sorry, but pub­lic splits are almost the def­i­n­i­tion of democ­racy. And even more offen­sive is talk from the Gemayel clan that the seat “belongs to the fam­ily.” As one colum­nist for the pan-Arab London-based al Hayat news­pa­per said, “it is also the kind of village-based atti­tude that makes oth­ers nau­seous.“
For while Aoun and his alliance with the ene­mies of Amer­ica are dubi­ous, shirk­ing the nec­es­sary foun­da­tions of democ­racy — actual, fair elec­tions — for a fake con­sen­sus among Lebanon’s Chris­tians does lit­tle to resolve any of the real issues of Lebanon or of the Mid­dle East. Democ­racy is not an add-on to a soci­ety, but a fun­da­men­tal basis for one. For the gov­ern­ment — which came to power demo­c­ra­t­i­cally — to attempt to bully polit­i­cal oppo­nents out of a race shows that Lebanon is not the show­case of progress that Bush thinks it is.
At the same din­ner with the Shi’ite scion, another woman told me, “It is this way in the United States, too. Look at Bush and his father. Look at Mrs. Clin­ton. Soon you will have 28 years of two fam­i­lies con­trol­ling Amer­ica. It is nor­mal.“
No, it’s not. Sure, Lebanon has one of the most robust democ­ra­cies in the Arab world. It doesn’t have a king or a pharaoh as Egypt does in Pres­i­dent Hosni Mubarak. The Lebanese peo­ple pride them­selves on their sophis­ti­ca­tion and like to look down on the author­i­tar­ian regimes around them as throw­backs to the Arab tribal men­tal­ity of the past. But even here, pol­i­tics ain’t noth­ing but a fam­ily thing. And until that changes, the Bush admin­is­tra­tion, itself a polit­i­cal dynasty, will have lit­tle hope of press­ing for democ­racy here, much less in the greater Mid­dle East.