I came across this post about the conflict in Lebanon today that is an absolute must read. I hadn’t heard of Michael Totten before, and he appears to lean towards the conservative side of the spectrum, but the piece itself is non-ideological and deeply sympathetic to the Lebanese people. A sample:
I spent a total of seven months in Lebanon recently, and I never could quite figure out what prevented the country from flying apart into pieces. It barely held together like unstable chemicals in a nitro glycerin vat. The slightest ripple sent Lebanese scattering from the streets and into their homes. They were far more twitchy than I, in part (I think) because they understood better than I just how precarious their civilized anarchy was. Their country needed several more years of careful nurturing during peace time to fully recover from its status as a carved up failed state.
By bombing all of Lebanon rather than merely the concentrated Hezbollah strongholds, Israel is putting extraordinary pressure on Lebanese society at points of extreme vulnerability. The delicate post-war democratic culture has been brutally replaced, overnight, with a culture of rage and terror and war.
…
Disarming Hezbollah through persuasion and consensus was not possible in the first year of Lebanon’s independence. Disarming Hezbollah by force wasn’t possible either. The Lebanese people have been called irresponsible and cowardly by some of their friends in America for refusing to resume the civil war. Unlike Hezbollah, though, most Lebanese know better than to start unwinnable wars. This is wisdom, not cowardice, and it’s sadly rare in the Arab world now. They are being punished entirely too much for what they have done and for what they can’t do.
The comments section contains one of the more informed debates I’ve seen run through comments in a while, although it’s of course punctuated by the ubiquitous right-wing boobs who see everything except Israel’s and America’s military actions as the problem. Buried in the comments section was
Blog Post: Lebanon’s Premature Liberalism
Article: God’s army has plans to run the whole Middle East
