BEIRUT — This will likely be the last post of the year on B2I, as in two days I leave for Aus­tralia to get mar­ried. There’s also the lit­tle mat­ter of hol­i­days and declin­ing inter­est on the part of the major papers in Iraq. I fig­ure it will pick back up next year once the cam­paign gets into full swing and Iraq is a major issue again. I hope so anyway.

Lebanon is a mess, but it looks like things are mov­ing again. I sus­pect it will be sorted out in a week or so. Don’t look for a pres­i­den­tial vote tomor­row, though. The Lebanese have to amend the con­sti­tu­tion first, and there could be some legal wran­gling. At the very least, there’s some paper­work of some kind and that won’t be done by tomorrow.

Iraq is improv­ing, for sure, on the secu­rity front and the Bush for­eign pol­icy team isn’t as abjectly hor­ri­ble as it has been in the past. But the real ques­tion, still, is whether the secu­rity gains mat­ter. Are we look­ing at another exam­ple of [Col. Tu’s com­ment to Army Col. Harry Summers](http://www.slate.com/id/2171510)? There’s some evi­dence the var­i­ous fac­tions are merely tak­ing a breather. I hope it is a last­ing decrease in vio­lence lead­ing to actual peace, but I wonder. …

Any­way, like I said, this is prob­a­bly it for 2007. It’s been a rough year in some ways, but a blessed one in oth­ers. Wish us all luck over here in this part of the world.