"instated"

For "instated" read "reinstated"

On the other hand, and per contra, whenever you encounter the word "redouble" as in "we must reouble our efforts" you should

for "redouble" read "double"

otherwise you'd be quadrupling your efforts, and that's asking too much.

Conclusion:

Sometimes the Lord giveth, and sometimes He taketh away.

Posted by: Hugh at May 14, 2008 8:43 PM

Hey Pres. Bush and Condi Rice....
you should be proud of yourselfs for showing no back bone in Lebanon,
wasting $1.6 billion of our taxpayers money on, 'what you called Lebanon military' but now we find went to a small Lebanon security force (so I wonder who you gave all the money to),
for not standing up to Iran and letting them know the meddling will cost them,
for NOW putting Israel on the brink of war in a grand scale,
for showing the rest of the muslim world that America really is a 'paper tiger',
for being completly silent on this issue.

Posted by: alaskan1000 at May 14, 2008 8:52 PM

Lebanon is a fiction of a country. Years ago it would have been far better to have sequestered the southern 2,000 square miles or so of Lebanon as a separate Arab Christian nation in alliance with Israel. But then this would have been logical and self-preserving and thus out of keeping with the illogic which characterizes the Middle East and the Islamic world in general. Thus the idiocy, uselessness, inanity and insanity proceeds apace. Nothing new here.

Posted by: Wellington at May 14, 2008 9:01 PM

The end of Lebanon dates from that day, in 1982, when Bashir Gemayel was blown up -- the same day he, in a speech, first used the word "dhimmitude." Lebanon was always the redoubt and refuge of Christians, who found in the mountainous region, the Mountain of Lebanon, Mont Liban, a place where, far from the centers of Islam, they could survive. But they didn't reproduce enough, and the Muslims outbred them, and the Muslim Arabs known as the "Palestinians" contributed to the demographic degringolade.

However, proximity to those Christians did raise the level of the local Muslims, or at least some of them. In the case of Lebanon, it was the Sunni merchant class.

And power, which had been carefully distributed between Christians, Sunnis, and Shi'a (with the Druse also not being forgotten), according to the census of 1935, remained intelligently split. However, after World War II, slowly but surely, the French withdrew as protectors of the Maronites (the most self-assured, and least "Arab" of the Christians, who knew that their presence in the area predated the arrival of the Arabs and of Islam, and who did not make the mistake of thinking that the linguistic and cultural imperialism of the Arabs, a natural accompaniment of the arrival of Muslims, made them into into Arabs, that is into more than "Arabic-using" Lebanese. And then the Americans came in, in 1956, to rescue the old order, but that was it. The "Palestinian" Arabs kept multiplying, and in their villages (called, quite inaccurately, "refugee camps"), where their needs were met by UNRWA, they had time to plot and plan, and they destabilizied and they threatened, now the Christians here, now the Shi'a there.

Meanwhile, just as Muslims outbreed non-Muslims, the Shi'a Muslims outbred not only the Christians, but also the Sunnis (the same kind of overbreeding accounts for the steady, growing Shi'ite demographic dominance in Iraq over the Sunnis), and it is they who now constitute a plurality in the country, and think they should rule the roost. Their leaders -- first Fadlallah and now Nasrallah -- are troglodytic, but they are troglodytes who have an Iran that, thanks to Carter and Brzezinski, was taken over by the least nationalistic (Iranian nationalsim is a powerful anti-Islamic force) and most Muslim of of regimes, that which now rules over the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Were the Shi'a of Iran only to seize Greater and Lesser Tunb, or to wreak havoc and overturn the Ruler (oops, King) of Bahrain, if they were only to cause trouble for Kuwait, and trouble in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, that would be a Good Thing for the Camp (as yet unrecognized) of Infidels, for it would worry, demoralize, divide, and ultimately weaken the Camp of Islam.

And similarly, were their only victims in Lebanon other Muslims, one might not mind. But it is Lebanon as a haven for Christians that is now threatened, in the end. And because none of the ruling elites in the Western world has given a thought to providing a permanent place of refuge, in the Middle East itself, to the more than a million Christians who have left, or will have to leave, Iraq, for example by moving many of them to Lebanon (and forcing the Shi'a out, by popular demand, so that they go to Iraq, among other Shi';a Arabs), or by moving them to the "West Bank," and forcing out the Muslim Arabs who represent a permanent threat to Israel, but who, in Iraq, or elsewhere in the Middle East (they can't be allowed into Western countries, not having been raised on a steady diet of hysteria and hate), they could be given space in Iraq, replacing those lost Assyrians and Chaldeans, who if they wish to remain in the Middle East, should find their natural homes in Lebanon, or the "West Bank" within permanent Israeli protection, or possibly in Syria if one assumes that the Alawites will begin to see the light, stop doing the Iranian bidding in order to prove that they are "real, if Shi'a, Muslims," and continue to keep the local Muslims in check which is the only protection the Syrian Christians now possess.

But who in the Western world now thinks of saving the Christians through such intelligent, and in another day, obvious population transfer?

It isn't done. We prefer to stay pure, by never mentioning such things, and thus we allow millions of people to be booted out, with nowhere to go, because we simply can't begin to think in realistic terms about such transfers, which were the norm, not the exception, throughout human history -- including the history of the last century.

Posted by: Hugh at May 14, 2008 9:21 PM

Aggression pays, and appeasement 'pays' the aggressor.

Lebanon is now a conquered state, so it should be renamed "Hizbullahn".

Islamic Jihad won this one. How long before the Lebanese Christians go the way of Anatolian Christians in Turkey, where they're only 1% dhimmi population? It's a predictable pattern lost on State and the Free World, mired in its self inflicted multiculturalist 'tolerance' appeasement.

Posted by: Battle_of_Tours at May 14, 2008 9:22 PM

" . . . stressing that we are opposed to the use of armed violence for the achievement of political objectives, the government has decided to cancel both of its decisions."

What a fatuous statement! First, the government didn't oppose the armed violence at all, it gave in to it almost at once. Second, armed violence certainly did achieve its political objectives in this case.
But perhaps there was a mitigating factor: did the U.S. and/or the other Western powers bring any pressure to bear on the Lebanese government?

Posted by: ebonystone at May 14, 2008 9:57 PM

"US-backed". Even Israeli media have adopted this new euphemism for democratic governments. I guess it is better than US-backed "regime" which is more the MSM's style.

Posted by: Saul Wall at May 14, 2008 10:09 PM

Moving Christians from Iraq to Lebanon
Moving Shia Arab Muslims from Lebanon to Iraq
Moving Sunni Arab Muslims from Lebanon to Saudi Arabia(?)

Hugh,
It's a fascinating idea. It's just too bad it would never fly. It lacks political correctness. It's the type of thing Western PC nuts condemned to the hilt in the former Yugoslavia. We've also heard it ad nauseam about Iraq, particularly Baghdad. All those groups that once lived together have self-segregated since the war began - proof (in some eyes) of how bad we have been for Iraq.
While not exactly ethnic cleansing (most of those who would be moved are Arab), it's a kind of religious, or sectarian, cleansing. It's not a good advertisement for diversity.

Wouldn't moving Muslims out of Lebanon go against the Islamic doctrine which says that a land has been Islamized then it can never revert to its earlier form?

Posted by: PMK at May 14, 2008 10:13 PM

There was not one, but two suggestons.

One concerns Lebanon. The notion -- supported by Maronites and Greek Orthodox, Druse, and I think by Sunni Muslims too, worried about a Shi'a takeover -- to remove many of the Shi'a Arabs in Lebanon and let them be welcomed among co-religionists in Iraq, where by the way they would presumably be allowed to share in Iraq's gigantic oil wealth, and be much better off than they could ever be in Lebanon, even if they continue to receive arms from Iran. They would be replaced by Christian refugees from Muslim intolerance in Iraq, for it is clear that Christians have no future in an Iraq without the iron rule of Saddam Hussein to keep Muslim fanatics in check.

The second concerns Israel. The Muslim Arabs on the "West Bank" are a permanent threat to Israel. They cannot, of course, whatever this or that American administration gets into its silly little head, or whatever others, now into their fourth decade of Arab propaganda that is steadily repeated on the BBC (Lyse Doucet, Orla Guerin, Judy Swallow, Robin Lustig, Jeremy Bowen, Katya Adler, and so many others, including of course John Simpson, about whom so much has been said at this site -- come on out, don't be shy, take a bow!) and in The Guardian and in the columns of Robert Fisk, and on RF1 and in Agence France-Press and in Le Monde (Eric Rouleau, you too, come on out here, for all that you did over so many decades!), and of course in the hideous (and especially intolerable because of where it is appearing) German coverage, and all the rest of those who have swallowed, then regurgitated, so much Arab propaganda) think is the "solution," be allowed to control that area (which rightly was assigned to the future "Jewish National Home" under the express terms of the League of Nations' Mandates Commission), control either the invasion routes, or control the aquifers that Israel needs for its survival, or to limit the natural growth of the Jewish population on land it certainly needs -- a land that is less than one-one-thousandth of what the Arabs have -- to survive.

Why should not those Muslim Arabs, a permanent threat, be transferred out, and Arabic-speaking (but non-Arab) Christians, who were in the area before the Arabs left Arabia bringing the "gift" of Islam, not be allowed to settle, not alongside, but instead of, Muslims who share the views of those who drove those Christians out of Iraq, and to settle where they will be protected by Israel's army, and may be the focus of interest by the world's Christians, or at least those who have woken up to what Islam has wrought, on Eastern Christianity, over the past 1350 years.

These are ideas that deserve discussion. But they won't be discussed, as long as everyone acts as if perfectly sensible measures cannot be discussed, while the truly idiotic notions, the ones that blandly ignore what Islam is all about, such as that "two-state solution," are gravely pondered, and talked about -- by the likes of Aaron "jerusalemrefugeesborderssecurityarethefourcoreissues" Miller.

I'm right, and all the rices and millers are wrong. But what's that got to do with the price of eggs?

Posted by: Hugh at May 14, 2008 11:31 PM

Nonsence. This is typical of the Lebanese government.

Oh, and by the way, Hugh is indeed right...about a great many things.

Posted by: awake at May 14, 2008 11:36 PM

In memory of Gilda Radner.

Robert, just in time for the presidential erect....... never mind.

Posted by: Shy Guy at May 14, 2008 11:57 PM

Hizbollah taken power in Lebanon,"Syria Happy", "Iran Happy".
Christians and Sunni's afraid.
Sunni's, Shiites and Christians in uproar.
Israel celebrates 60 years, with rockets from Iran and with more threats.
Bush in Israel with threats of being assasinated,would be assasins trained in Iran.
Obama: Christian/Moslim? Under Moslim law he is a Moslim, since his father was a Moslim, he says he is a Christian, now he can be killed with all the other unbelievers. Hamas sending money for campaign Obama???
The old "KKK" might want to kill him too.
What a wonderful world.

Posted by: Maria at May 15, 2008 1:28 AM

Well said, Wellington!

Hugh, Of course your right and the rice-millers are wrong. How long will we be able to get eggs that dont mirror the prices they get for them in Alaska?

Posted by: guide inside at May 15, 2008 3:19 AM

If they had had any brains, they would have helped Israel destroy this mass of lunatics in their midst during the previous fighting.

But brains seems to be in short supply everywhere.

From the White House to the Beirut street.

Posted by: profitsbeard at May 15, 2008 11:34 PM