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Born at the Crest of the Empire

Saturday, May 10, 2008

And in Lebanon......

Hezbullah has taken over large swaths of Beirut. The Lebanese military has mostly stood by and fallen back to protect the leadership of the other parties. The majority of the street battles are between Hezbullah and non-govermental militias among the Sunni and Druze communities.
One casualty of the recent confrontations has been the widespread notion that Sunni militias capable of countering Hezbollah were being trained in Lebanon, said Mr. Naoum, the columnist.

As it turned out, the young Sunni fighters loyal to Mr. Hariri’s Future Movement — part of the government majority — were no match for their better-armed Shiite rivals. Mr. Hariri apparently recognized this, and ordered a withdrawal rather than face a massacre. On Friday, numerous men in the Sunni neighborhood of Tarik Jadideh complained that they had been given instructions not to fight, and now felt humiliated.


The Lebanese government and US are looking to Saudi Arabia, Jordan, etc, for help.

And, in a troubling sign, who wants to step in to rebalance the Sunni effort?
Al-Qaeda has reportedly called on its operatives to go to Lebanon and defend what it called the Sunni community of the country.
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2 Comments:

  • We don't have a frickin' clue, do we? Our Middle East policy seems to be run by people with corrupt, "think tank" convictions and unyielding, pre-determined "beliefs" rather than, oh I don't know, competent and intelligent people who live in a reality based world.

    Why anyone would want to be the next president is beyond me. One thing I'm pretty sure about, if McCain wins the White House we're all in for a world of hurt. The man is a boob.

    By Blogger -epm, at 8:34 AM  

  • One of my running opinions is that the foreign policy team had an oversimplified interpretation of the middle east, thinking that the conflicts could be isolated and manipulated the way the Central American policy was run under Reagan/Bush.

    And, yeah, the next president is inheriting a mess, but there will also be a window of relief that the policy is back on the table. (assuming it's not McCain.)

    By Blogger mikevotes, at 9:41 AM  

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