All that was, one week ago, bound to happen soon but to unknown ends has turned out well for Lebanese democratic sovereignty. Bashar Assad does not consider his position strong enough for arbitrary suppression in Beirut, after all. His farcical speech and proposal for treaty performance, while not retracted, has been chipped and reshaped at the direction of America, Europe and the United Nations. In this political current, Assad must satisfy an implicit reasonable weekly deportation quota, one that finally includes — at least cosmetically — Syria's mukhabarat. His recent multiple acedences have bound him by word, complicating both his own evasion and client sympathy. The Washington-led alliance serving Lebanon's Cedars has indeed been faithful to a tireless popular revolt that has only grown in strength, numbers and plain endurance.
Four thousand Syrian troops are out of Lebanon, two offices of Damascus' imported Gestapo are vacant and the seventh international exchange for Lebanon's freedom has begun, on the strength of events, smoothly and quietly. United Nations envoy Terje Roed-Larsen publicly erased Syrian hopes of diplomatic refuge on Sunday, advising the Ba'athist dictatorship to honor Security Council Resolution 1559 and extracting a promise for a substantive departure timetable. Seeing no reason to draw back for a punch with Syria already flinching, the Bush administration offered Damascus a light spurring for encouragement, on Sunday bidding Bashar Assad again to put "action" to "words"; and the next day stipulating terms, with one statement advising Damascus not to interpret its own plea bargain by setting Lebanese polity as a cue for exeunt, and with the other that the United Nations not let it happen. The White House immediately got what it wanted from Secretariat, Roed-Larsen swearing that "the political process in Lebanon is irrelevant to the parties' obligation to implement Security Council Resolution 1559." Bashar Assad knows he has until May.
Since being anonymously reported and officially denied, news of the Bush administration's "softening" to terrorist organization Hezbollah has been placed in terms much more favorable to Syria than is warranted. President Bush is not giving in to Lebanon's migrant terrorists: he's backing them into a corner. Hezbollah's bluff was called. The Damascus-backed street toughs and their supporters could only crow about a staged, flatulent demonstration for a few days before well over a million Lebanese assembled to mourn and commemorate former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. Even if another few rounds of flag-burning and infidel-damning can be had, the sudden conspicuity of these rallies — angry, brutish males speckled with a few patently ugly women like every other "Arab street demonstration" before Iraqis set a pluralist precedent — will sink them.
Bush and his administration know this. They've seen the quick evaporation of fanaticism before. What the president is offering to Hezbollah is not an "olive branch," nor "respect," nor "inclusion," but the chance to escape destruction by those who define the organization correctly.
White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan spoke on the subject with reporters yesterday. He clarified Hezbollah as a subset of Lebanese independence, insofar as it is an obstacle to Lebanon's democracy in current form:
Hezbollah is a terrorist organization. Our view has not changed when it comes to that. And 1559 also calls for all militias to be disarmed. And we want to see 1559 fully complied with.
The Bush administration's locution is meticulous. Consider McClellan's echo of his own words from August 19, 2004:
The Iraqi government has made it clear that he needs to leave the Shrine of Ali, that he needs to disarm and disband the militia. We need to see action by him to follow through on those demands.
Scott McClellan was speaking of Iran-commanded seditionist Muqtada al-Sadr, whose gangs were demolished shortly thereafter. Notably, this White House classification came after al-Sadr's failed April insurrection. Hezbollah will work from within a very tight margin on account of Washington's long memory.
Beirut politics also seem to be on a short azimuth. Omar Karami's reappointment was a blow to Lebanese democrats that glanced. A petitionary army holds steady and behind them, a martial one. The opposition's writ to the cabinet stands, the Syrian-propped government's position is as confidently besieged as ever before, and rumors about the recently completed independent investigation of Rafiq Hariri's murder could deal a political ace to the Cedars. Walid Jumblatt, of rival-turned-colleague Michael Aoun, said, "Let the best democrat win." As winds blow now, such a man may easily.
