Reply #70: The Lebanese People Remember History- Conquer and Divide

[chlamor]

Between 500,000 and a million Lebanese turned out to tell Bush and Chirac they don’t want Syria out of their country, not because they particularly love the Syrians but because they are afraid of what will happen if the Syrian military leaves.

“Syrian forces are credited with helping end the civil war that tore Lebanon apart,” notes Reuters. “Christian, Muslim and Druze militias fought each other. Battles also erupted within rival communities. About 150,000 people are thought to have died.”

The French imposed colonial rule on the Lebanese so of course they dislike and distrust them. They are concerned as an earlier post stated mostly about the power vaccuum and what this means to their stability. The Lebanese people must have their autonomy but it must come from within.

To gain some further insight read 'Ending Syria's Occupation of Lebanon: The U.S. Role', a report of a group chaired by Daniel Pipes and Ziad Abdelnour, in which is buried one of the real reasons for the current events in Lebanon and Syria. You can google it. Here is a snip:

"The Middle East faces the looming problem of water shortages because of both the area's hot and arid climate and its huge population growth. Aside from Turkey (which controls the sources of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers) and Iraq (through which those two rivers flow), the only Middle Eastern country blessed with a substantial supply of fresh water is Lebanon. Its high mountain ranges capture and retain impressive amounts of snow and moisture for several months, much of which eventually feeds subterranean aquifers and artesian wells. The landscape is dotted with springs, small streams, rivulets, and several sizable rivers like the Litani. Between 80 and 90 percent of Lebanon's flowing water, though, is lost for that which is not absorbed into underground storage, ends up in the sea. Assuming all of Lebanon's future water needs can be met using half of this wasted amount, harnessing and distributing the remaining half to neighboring countries like Israel, Syria, and Jordan would be a significant step in alleviating the impending regional water shortage."



Here from an article by Robert Fisk:
The Lebanese are stunned. They know that the regional tour of the US neo-conservative deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, with his demands for a Syrian withdrawal and the disarmament of the anti-Israeli Hizbollah militia, is part of Israel's agenda in Lavant. A weakened Syria, along with a pliant Lebanon without any anti-Israeli forces on its border, is almost as pleasant for Washington and its Israeli friends as an emasculated, American-dominated Iraq.

Syria's supposed support for the Iraqi insurgency--another of Mr Armitage's griefs--has a special irony. It was Lebanese rebel General Michel Aoun's alliance with Saddam Hussein in 1990 that originally inspired the US to support Syria's destruction of Aoun's statelet.
http://www.robert-fisk.com/articles442.htm


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