Jihad terrorists, you say? No truce except to gather strength to fight again? Come now -- don't be so parochial! From the New York Times via Financial Times, with thanks to Gabrielle Goldwater:
WASHINGTON, March 9 - After years of campaigning against Hezbollah, the radical Shiite Muslim party in Lebanon, as a terrorist pariah, the Bush administration is grudgingly going along with efforts by France and the United Nations to steer the party into the Lebanese political mainstream, administration officials say.The administration’s shift was described by American, European and United Nations officials as a reluctant recognition that Hezbollah, besides having a militia and sponsoring attacks on Israelis, is an enormous political force in Lebanon that could block Western efforts to get Syria to withdraw its troops.
On Tuesday, Hezbollah showed its clout by sponsoring one of the biggest demonstrations of recent Lebanese history, bringing hundreds of thousands of largely Shiite supporters into central Beirut to support the party’s alliance with Syria and, by extension, the presence in Lebanon of 14,000 Syrian troops.
Never mind that it was a hoax. Come now! You must awaken to the realities of realpolitik! Have some champagne! Let us drink to the glorious future!
Well, a Syrian bused into Lebanon and told to call himself a Lebanese will believe it within five minutes. Also, any Lebanese solution will have to consider that the Ithna'ashariyya Shi'ah Muslims are now the largest single denominational division of the Lebanese people; and for better or worse, Hizbollah and Amal are their political organizations. Whether we liked it or not, the Communists were the strongest political organization in China in the 1940's; and now Lebanon's stuck in a situation that is bleak, too.
Now, I would like divine providence to prove me wrong, and see Hizbollah's support crumble. But I do have my fears. My lifetime saw Lebanon bleed a good long while already.
Fifty years ago Lebanon, historically the refuge (in its mountains) of the Christians, the Maronites, was still more than 50% Christian. Charles Malik was its leading statesman; Antoine Fattal, author of the most important scholarly work on the legal status of non-Muslims under Islam, a professor.
Now Lebanon has had two demographic changes. The Christians (and all those who left Lebanon between 1880 and 1930 were Christians, feeling the Arab and Muslim wind in their hair)are now a minority, and Lebanon is islamizing. And, to the chagrin of both the Druse and of the Sunni Muslim old order, the Shi'a have reproduced faster than they, which explains the power of this new and, in Lebanon, even more sinister group.
The lesson of Lebanon? Demography is destiny. And that is why Da'wa, demography, and dhimmitude are the most successful instruments for the spread of Islam, and must be resisted. That means identifying, and figuring out how to counter, campaigns of Da'wa among the pscyhically and economically marginal (as prisoners), and working to make Da'wa as difficult as possible, while constantly putting Muslims in the Infidel countries on edge about nibbling away at the beliefs of their own adherents, and publicizing and supporting the work of those who, such as Ali Sina, are so good at helping convince people to leave Islam, of stopping Muslim migration and, where possible, reversing it (and there a thousand ways to do this), and by identifying, and opposing, all attempts to extort, or to create, the dhimmi-atittude which too many in the West seem willing to adopt, based on their dreamy misunderstanding of the theory and practice of Islam, and their refusal to rethink their belief that the West is the sole repository of wickedness. This will come as news to black Africans in Sudan, Nigeria, Mali, Mauritania, to Hindus in Bangladesh and Pakistan and Kashmir, to Christians in Indonesia and Pakistan, to Hindus and Chinese in Malaysia and Indonesia, to...well, fill in the rest yourself.
Lebanon offers a cautionary tale. One should learn from the experience of others. If all of Mesopotamia, Syria, North Africa, Byzantium, Persia, Central Asia, much of Hindustan and the East Indies, have not done it, because the islamization was so long ago and we have ignored how the non-Muslim peoples were slowly asphyxiated where not killed or converted outright, we have another chance: look at how, in this century, once the European powers had stopped applying pressure, even the few places where non-Muslims had remained were steadily emptied out.
In Turkey, the Armenian masacres of 1915-1920 could take place because the Western protectors that had put pressure on the Ottomans for treating their Christian subjects better were otherwise occupied (and Germany actually promoted the 1915 declaration of a Jihad against the countries of the Triple Entente), and Greeks were massacred at Smyrna. Constantinople, which in 1914 was more than 50% non-Muslim, is now 1% non-Muslim.
The same was true in that other European center --Egypt. As soon as Nasser came to power, he booted out the Italian, Greek, Armenian, and Jewish communitites, seizing all of their property (the Egyptians lived for a while quite well on all those non-Muslim goods -- one more example of a disguised jizya -- which was then replaced by Soviet, and now by American, foreign aid). Alexandria, once celebrated for its cosmopolitan population -- both Ungaretti and Seferis were born there, as if to mark that once upon a time Italians, and Greeks, lived there -- became uniformly Egyptian, and within Egypt, the Copts, the stubborn remnant of Egypt's indigenous inhabitants (and of course many of those now considering themselves "Arabs" are simply Copts, long ago islamized), saw their Golden Age under Lord Cromer, and then under the ancien regime that ended with the exiling of Farouk, ended, and even Saint Sadat, an admirer of the Muslim Brotherhood, made things considerably worse for the Copts, despite employing as the "court Copt" Boutros Boutros Ghali, so useful for public display in the chanceries of the West.
Possibly the Syrians will leave. But Lebanon as a haven for Christians -- that is another matter. And what will be learned from this story?
Anything? Nothing?
Rumors on Hezbollah have been in different publications every other day. For example, take the March 5 story by the London Independent claiming "Britain and EU move to outlaw Hezbollah" at:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/unitedstatesaction/message/11185
All these stories should be taken with a healthy degree of skepticism.
So, I guess we can look forward to Hezzies being greeted by Bush at a White House function? Perhaps Bush can invite some of the families of the dead marines killed by the Hezzies in the 1980s, you know, sort of a meet and greet? What I'd like to read about in that GOP/GOPUSA/USA Next shill (I mean, LGF) is something about this repulsive sell out by Bush, if true.
One of the things I like most about JW and DW is that Robert and Hugh are honest, in that you don't shill for anyone. LGF seemed to be like that a while back, but Charles now skips over anything which casts doubt on his view that Bush and the GOP are world saviors and can do no wrong and everyone else is the devil.
"Possibly the Syrians will leave. But Lebanon as a haven for Christians -- that is another matter. And what will be learned from this story?"
Well Hugh, I guess the muslims just haven't heard about the greatness of diversity and multi-culturalism?
Seymour Paine says:
"What I'd like to read about in that GOP/GOPUSA/USA Next shill (I mean, LGF) is something about this repulsive sell out by Bush, if true."
I'm with you and I voted for GWB. I'm disgusted with this attitude he is beyond scrutiny and can do no wrong. Bush is a hawkish Liberal. He's not anymore conservative than the Governator.
Please Mr President:
Close our borders,
Stop the spending,
Tell it like it is with all the gory determined details -- eliminate political correctness from your vocabulary,
Stop pandering to the Arabs,
Let our soldiers fight like warriors in Iraq not like policemen,
Cease being an A1 hypocrite by pressuring Israel to commit national suicide. It doesn't make sense to force them to capitulate to their rampaging monkey neighbors who want to erase their existence. (Pay attention to what is happening to Israel -- it will eventually happen to us. Learn from it)
That's all ...
Kemaste: I'm so used to get bombed when I make statements like the one I made. It just amazes me that Bush & Co. get away with the adulation from the right. They make all the right noises but then do the wrong things. Recognizing Hez; just one. Going easy on the Saudis, a big one, too; coddling CAIR, Visa Express, to say nothing of Grover Norquist, and on and on and yet the right is silent. The right still crucifies Clinton for missing OBL, yet Bush has basically forgotten about him and everyone is silent. I feel completely abandonded by both sides.
ARGH!!
A week in Europe and Bush turns into freakin' Jacques Chirac.
So here we have it again. The US is going to support Hizbullah in a Lebanese government.And those poor Iraqi Christians who fled to Syria after the US/UK liberated Iraq, will now have to flee again. Syria's influence in Lebanon though not perfect, was atleast moderating the worst excesses of an islamist Hizbullah. Now with Syria out of the picture, a new constitution is likely to be drawn up reflecting the islamic majority in Lebanon, and the last vestiges of power that Christians had, will vanish. They will be marginalised and killed just as the Assyrians in Iraq.
The poor Assyrians and Christians in the ME- they are running out of places in the ME to find safety, and just at the time when the West is getting tougher on asylum seekers from the ME.
I wonder if anyone in the Bush admistration has given any thought to the plight of Christians in Iraq, and now what is most likely going to occur in Lebanon, and maybe even in Syria. The Bush administration seems to be doing everything to please the Wahhabis, both in the ME and the US.