'Just World News' with Helena Cobban

Bushists fund Lebanon army; Lebanon embraces Hizbullah

Posted by Helena Cobban at July 16, 2008 10:34 AM

Sometimes the sheer depth of the ignorance of the people directing the Bush administration's foreign policy manages, yet again, to amaze me.

Evidently, the Bushists don't realize the gravity of the change that overcame Lebanese politics back in May, when the Emir of Qatar was finally able to conclude the Doha Agreement, a resolution to Lebanon's longstanding governance crisis that involved, essentially, caving to Hizbullah's core demands.

Evidently, the Bushists don't understand that-- as I noted here last week-- the main quality displayed by their man in Beirut, Fouad "Turn-on-a-dime" Siniora, is his ability to, um, turn on a dime... Or the fact that, since May, he has represented the pro-Hizbullah coalition's interests in Lebanon, more than Washington's.

Hence, the national holiday announced for Lebanon today, to celebrate Hizbullah's success in gaining the return of the five Lebanese detainees still held in Israel and the remains of a couple of hundred more.

And the Bushists' attitude to the Beirut government's new orientation? Why, just yesterday, the US Central Command's Director of Strategy, Plans, and Policy, who was visiting Lebanon, "announced that the US government has increased its support to the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) by $32.5 million."

Don't get me wrong. I support the Doha Agreement, judging that it was a realistic step that reflects the political balance in the country far better than the previous, heavily polarized and pro-US order did and gives its people a chance to de-escalate their tensions and reconstruct their country. But no-one should misunderstand the true political impact of the agreement.

I also believe the US citizenry and government should find ways to start engaging in a dialogue with Hizbullah in order to start addressing the multiple and longstanding grievances that each side has against the other. (As I've written many times before, including here.)

But absent any such dialogue-- and absent, too, any understanding at all of what has been happening in Lebanon-- this doling out of my taxpayer dollars to the armed forces of a clearly pro-Hizbullah government in Beirut seems either ridiculous or actively a bad idea.

A statement issued by the US embassy in Beirut yesterday described the goal of US military assistance to Lebanon as being "to strengthen the LAF and increase its capacity to defend Lebanon's borders... "

Perhaps the Bushists, in supporting this financial aid to the LAF, were building on a view that the LAF is a bastion inside Lebanon against Hizbullah? Why on earth would they do that?

Maybe because of analysis like this, which was published just a few days ago on the website of the Middle East Policy Council. It comes from a self-proclaimed expert called Antony T. Sullivan, who wrote,

Hizbullah's apparent "victory" in its mini-coup on the streets of Beirut in mid May has been more apparent than real. Today, Hizbullah is a deeply worried organization. Perceived dangers loom almost everywhere.

A multitude of reports from Lebanon and elsewhere, including especially from within Hizbullah itself, indicate that Hizbullah now believes that its very survival as a military organization is at stake.

One Hizbullah source recently stated, "Any gains made by the Lebanese government mean equal losses for Hizbullah." This source added that "Hizbullah will not permit the Lebanese government to get stronger at its expense."

How did Sullivan get his analysis so deeply wrong? Why does the MEPC even publish this nonsense? Have people in the administration been relying on this deeply misguided analysis? And anyway, who is Antony T. Sullivan? (The MEPC's web-bio of him conceals as much as it reveals.) Is he just ignorant, or is he a shill for someone or some thing?

Update, Wednesday, 8 p.m.: It turns out, on reflection, that I have actually met Sullivan. It happened nearly four years ago, at a conference. I guess I had just forgotten. Recalling the man I met then, I would say it is most likely that he is NOT a shill, but just misinformed. Sorry about that.

The Media Transparency organization tells us that between 1995 and 2000, Sullivan earned $550,000 by playing various leadership roles in the Earhart Foundation, a rightwing organization, founded by an oil-man back in the 1920s, that in recent years has been a major contributor to the neo-cons' main temple in Washington, the American Enterprise Institute.

Those neo-cons! They sure do like to mess up our foreign policy!

Remember how, back in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, they were all so busy telling us that Ahmad ("Snake-oil") Chalabi was deeply pro-American and the best thing since sliced bread? On that occasion, they completely ignored all the available evidence that Chalabi (a) had a long, well-documented record of unreliability, and (b) was in a very close relationship with the Iranian mullahs.

I note that the neo-cons' love affair with Chalabi and his cronies resulted in a considerable strengthening of Iran's influence in the Gulf region, and the shovelling of more than half a trillion dollars of US taxpayer money-- and the lives of more than 4,1000 Americans-- into a project that for more than five years now has continued to increase Iran's power there.

Go figure.

But maybe the US military should stop rushing around the world with an open checkbook, handing out funds and weapons to all and sundry?

Indeed, just yesterday, SecDef Bob Gates made something approaching this same argument. Speaking in Washington to something called the U.S. Global Leadership Campaign, Gates,

warned yesterday against the risk of a "creeping militarization" of U.S. foreign policy, saying the State Department should lead U.S. engagement with other countries, with the military playing a supporting role.

"We cannot kill or capture our way to victory" in the long-term campaign against terrorism, Gates said, arguing that military action should be subordinate to political and economic efforts to undermine extremism.

Thank God that at least someone in this administration has some good sense.

Meanwhile, in Beirut, large numbers of dignitaries have been gathering to honor the return of the five Lebanese men whose release from Israeli ails was won through Hizbullah's tough and effective negotiations with Israel.

They include, oh yes, my dear old friend Walid Jumblatt, who was reported as having,

called the day a national one par excellence, adding that it is part of a long struggle that started in Al-Arkoub with the Lebanese National Movement and is being continued and crowned by the Islamic Resistance.... [etc, etc]

Lots of dimes being turned on in Lebanon these days, it seems.