Michael Totten is a great writer on Lebanon. Here he interviews Toni Nissi, a Lebanese Christian interested in getting the international community to come in and destroy Hezbollah. Great stuff about Lebanon's history and present.
Interesting tidbit in here about James Baker. For those of you who were super excited to see Rumsfeld leave, this is what the "realists" stand for:
“They don’t trust the Americans, yes,” Toni said. “But they don’t believe that the American soldiers are coming here. Most Lebanese believe and know that in 1990 the United States handed the Syrians Lebanon on a plate of silver.”
Toni is referring here to Secretary of State James Baker who traded a green-light for Syrian domination of Lebanon in exchange for Syrian “help” in ousting Saddam Hussein from Kuwait. Most Americans have no idea this even happened, but Lebanese have never forgotten it. Hezbollah’s Christian allies in Michel Aoun’s Free Patriotic Movement in particular bang on this point again and again.
Liberals and Realists get angry because Bush won't "deal" with our enemies - Iran and Syria. But there is a cost to "dealing" with such regimes and with getting a UN consensus for the Iraq war. This would be the price we pay for trying to be popular and well liked.
I find it difficult to understand why so many people are smug about their criticism of Bush for not pulling a James Baker like move both prior to and after the Iraq War.
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