BEIRUT — Well, well… It appears at first blush that things must have gone well for Syria in Annapo­lis. [Army Com­man­der Gen. Michel Suleiman has got­ten the nod from Hariri camp inside March 14](http://www.naharnet.com/domino/tn/NewsDesk.nsf/getstory?openform&AEDDA8B8857799F6C22573A100434AE0) as a con­sen­sus can­di­date for Baabda Palace. This is curi­ous because many in the pro-March 14 press have been label­ing him as sym­pa­thetic to Syria.
Hezbol­lah, too, seems to be inch­ing toward Suleiman, [giv­ing only luke­warm objec­tions on pro­ce­dural grounds](http://www.naharnet.com/domino/tn/NewsDesk.nsf/getstory?openform&140E0E198ED39744C22573A10054CC01). “To me, at the per­sonal level, I believe a con­sti­tu­tional amend­ment in par­lia­ment is pos­si­ble after res­ig­na­tion of Fouad San­iora from the gov­ern­ment which is nei­ther con­sti­tu­tional nor legit­i­mate,” said MP Mohammed Raad, the head of Hezbollah’s par­lia­men­tary bloc. But he stressed his views were entirely per­sonal. “We will not block any con­sen­sus pos­si­bil­ity if the intro to it is a con­sti­tu­tional amend­ment, pro­vided that all oppo­si­tion fac­tions have agreed on it.“
Even that old war­lord Samir Geagea, one of the most anti-Syrians of the March 14 coali­tion said the con­sti­tu­tional amend­ment allow­ing Suleiman into the pres­i­dency was “an option.“
So what hap­pened? Well, as [I wrote on Sunday](http://www.spot-on.com/archives/allbritton/2007/11/going_long_on_the_golan_at_ann_1.html), Syria got the Golan Heights on the table at Annapo­lis. And I pre­dicted then:

A suc­cess in Annapo­lis might mean the begin­ning of a real dis­cus­sion of a Grand Bar­gain for the region, not just another fit­ful start to Israeli-Palestinian nego­ti­a­tions. The think­ing is that if the Syr­i­ans are shown some flex­i­bil­ity on the Golan, they might also show some flex­i­bil­ity in Lebanon, which is in the midst of its worst polit­i­cal cri­sis since the end of the 1975 – 1990 Civil War — a polit­i­cal cri­sis stoked in large part by Syria and its allies in Lebanon.

And by “suc­cess” I meant some signs of thaw­ing on the part of Syria, the United States and Israel.
Now, it’s too soon to tell what is going down, but the fact that every­one started talk­ing nicely to each other here in Lebanon *the day after Annapo­lis* is pretty sig­nif­i­cant. Does it mean Syria has had a change of heart regard­ing Lebanon? Not likely. The inter­na­tional tri­bunal is still a Sword of Damo­cles over Bashar al-Assad’s head, and the Golan hasn’t been returned yet.
But my feel­ing is that the Amer­i­cans soft­ened their sup­port for Lebanon’s March 14 alliance a bit. There wouldn’t be this talk of Suleiman oth­er­wise. Still, he’s not totally pro-Syrian and the oppo­si­tion has its doubts about him, so no one got a total vic­tory if this thing goes through. What’s this mean for U.S.-Syrian rela­tions? Sounds like the hints of a thaw, which can be a good thing for almost every­one but anti-Syrian fac­tions in Beirut.
And what’s next? Ah, I have a text mes­sage that [Serge Bram­mertz just deliv­ered his final report on the assas­si­na­tion of Rafik Hariri to Prime Min­is­ter Fuad Siniora](http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=2&article_id=87078) and he allegedly names names. Wanna bet it’s the four he named last year — a list that includes Assad’s brother-in-law?
Hang on, we’re not out of the woods yet.

Sorry for all the emails today. I didn’t real­ize until not long ago that updat­ing old entries — even if just to change the text for­mat­ting — would send out emails. For every­one who got spammed, my sin­cer­est apologies.

BEIRUT — With all eyes turned to Annapo­lis, [another sig­nif­i­cant devel­op­ment hap­pened regard­ing Iraq](http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/27/world/middleeast/27iraq.html). Pres­i­dent Bush and Iraqi Prime Min­is­ter Nouri al-Maliki signed a “[Dec­la­ra­tion of Principles](http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/11/20071126 – 1.html)” that would pave the way for a Sta­tus of Forces Agree­ment ([SOFA](http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/sofa.htm)) on a long-term U.S. troop pres­ence in Iraq. (And by “long-term” I mean longer than 2013.)
Coin­ci­den­tally — or not, giv­ing the polit­i­cal sea­son upon us — the dead­line for final­iz­ing the agree­ment, which would include the num­ber of U.S. troops as well as the length of their deploy­ment, is set for July 31. That’s just in time for heat­ing up the 2008 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign! Ah, I can see it now. Vic­tory parades, bilat­eral agree­ments with a sov­er­eign Iraq, Democ­rats on the defen­sive. Nicely played, Mr. President.

Con­tinue read­ing →

My friends will tell you I’m an unabashed Mac guy. I love [Apple](http://www.apple.com) prod­ucts for their smooth­ness, their work­a­bil­ity, their [iconic and reas­sur­ing workflows](http://www.themodernword.com/eco/eco_mac_vs_pc.html). The Soon-to-be Mrs. Back-to-Iraq rolls her eyes at my obses­sion… Like­wise, as you can imag­ine, I’m no great fan of [Windows](http://www.microsoft.com).

This morn­ing, as I lis­tened to my friend’s com­plaints about the unpre­dictabil­ity of Win­dows — some­times things stop work­ing and then start again for no appar­ent rea­son what­so­ever — I real­ized that Lebanon works exactly the same way. And with the cur­rent, stu­pid cri­sis in Lebanon par­a­lyz­ing this place — lock­ing it up, so to speak — it occurred to me that Lebanon, such as it is, must be using Win­dows as its oper­at­ing sys­tem. Some similarities:

• It doesn’t feel well put-together. It’s a house of cards with an incon­sis­tent, incon­gru­ous inter­face. Where Mac OS X feels all of a piece, Win­dows (and Lebanon) feels cob­bled together. It’s as if some­one just slapped some legacy reli­gions and/or code together and said, “Go to town, play nice.” Well, .dll files aren’t always com­pat­i­ble, and, Sun­nis and Shi’ites, for exam­ple, don’t always get on together. Usu­ally they do, but when they don’t, look out.
• Fol­low­ing that, both Win­dows and mod­ern Lebanon were designed not with the users in mind, but the design­ers. In Microsoft’s case, Win­dows pri­mar­ily exists to make money for Bill Gates and Microsoft. Its reli­able cash stream come from big busi­ness, which tends to lock its employ­ees into using an OS that is obvi­ously on its last legs. Same for Lebanon. It was designed by the French using legacy Ottoman code which it stole — much like Microsoft did a shady deal to get MS-DOS — and set up to serve colo­nial inter­ests, rather than that of the Lebanese.
• Mod­ern Lebanon is, specif­i­cally, like Win­dows Vista. It’s shiny, nice to look at and eas­ily seduces. But the moment you actu­ally try to work with it, the nasty under­pin­nings — whether it’s sec­tar­i­an­ism or that damned Win­dows reg­istry — come up and bite you in the ass.
• It’s prone to viruses/outside inter­fer­ence by for­eign pow­ers that gum up the works. These can lead to…
• … Lock-ups that par­a­lyze the entire com­puter and/or coun­try. One dif­fer­ence: In the case of Lebanon, reboot­ing is a total hassle.
• It can be used to spew out junk email and/or jihadis if taken over by a hos­tile outsider.
• And finally, when it crashes, it crashes hard. Blue Screen of Civil War, anyone?

I know, I know… I’m open­ing myself up to fans of Win­dows who will tell me they’ve never, ever had a com­puter crash or a virus. Like­wise, I’m open­ing myself up to par­ti­sans of Lebanon who tell me that the place works just fine if you know how to work it. Obvi­ously, I don’t or I’d be hap­pily gin­ning up my [*wasta*](http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1740626) and/or bleakly sub­mit­ting to the mess that’s Microsoft Office.

That’s not to say Lebanon and Gates’ lit­tle piece soft­ware don’t have their charms. The biggest one: In both cases, whether it’s pol­i­tics or soft­ware, there are more [games](http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hqJ_5OmNTlIdB4U-SVQM73KkzH7wD8T4S8EG0).

My last col­umn of the year is [up at Spot-on now](http://www.spot-on.com/archives/allbritton/2007/11/going_long_on_the_golan_at_ann_1.html), look­ing at the dynam­ics of Syria’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Annapo­lis con­fer­ence. An excerpt:

There’s a Mid­dle East­ern proverb mak­ing the rounds these days: You can’t make war with­out Egypt and you can’t have peace with­out Syria. And if Syria’s sit­ting down at the table, as it’s indi­cated it will do at next week, it’s a safe bet that the fate of two key parts of the region — the Golan and Lebanon — are up for dis­cus­sion.
In two of the most intractable prob­lems of the region — Lebanon and the Israeli-Palestinian con­flict — the Syr­ian regime has been the immov­able obsta­cle. Because out­side the U.S., the Mid­dle East isn’t just defined by the Israeli-Arab con­flict. It’s a Gor­dian Knot of con­flicts involv­ing Israelis and Pales­tini­ans, Israel and Arabs, Arab Shi’ites and Arab Sun­nis, Arabs and Ira­ni­ans and the West and Iran. They’re all inter­twined, but the com­mon thread in this tan­gled skein is Syria and the regime of its Pres­i­dent Bashar al-Assad.
And in the past 48 hours, there has been signs of move­ment that might, just might sig­nal some kind of accord that the Syr­i­ans will accept. The Golan, the uplands seized by Israel from Syria in the 1967 war, is report­edly on the table at the Annapo­lis con­fer­ence which begins Tues­day. This was the pre­con­di­tion for Syria to attend the con­fer­ence, said its for­eign min­is­ter, Walid Muallem.
That’s very good news for the Amer­i­cans, the Israelis and pos­si­bly the Lebanese. Why? Because with Syria’s par­tic­i­pa­tion — along with Saudi Ara­bia and the other Arab states at the min­is­te­r­ial level — a suc­cess in Annapo­lis might mean the begin­ning of a real dis­cus­sion of a Grand Bar­gain for the region, not just another fit­ful start to Israeli-Palestinian nego­ti­a­tions. The think­ing is that if the Syr­i­ans are shown some flex­i­bil­ity on the Golan, they might also show some flex­i­bil­ity in Lebanon, which is in the midst of its worst polit­i­cal cri­sis since the end of the 1975 – 1990 Civil War — a polit­i­cal cri­sis stoked in large part by Syria and its allies in Lebanon.

You might be sur­prised at my conclusions.