Lebanon: Yet Another Foreign Policy Opportunity Screwed Up by the Bush Administration

In February 2005, shortly after the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik al-Hariri, the pro-Syrian Lebanese government resigned.  The day it happened, I warned against any stupid pro-American triumphalism:

But whatever happens next in Lebanon, it would be a mistake to view it only through the lens of some kind of Middle Eastern "people power," a Cedar Revolution as soft and peaceful as the Velvet Revolutions of 1989 or the Orange Revolution of 2004.

Of course that's exactly what happened.  Within hours, what happened in Lebanon was being called the Cedar Revolution, and the Bush administration was taking credit for the change.  Over the next few days, bloviators like David Brooks were claiming that what happened in Lebanon was the result of the US invasion of Iraq.  The problem was that Brooks, like most conservative champions of neocon foreign policy, is a simpleton when it comes to understanding the politics of a complicated place like Lebanon.  One small piece of evidence is that he glowingly quoted Druze leader Walid Jumblat, who just a few months earlier had declared "we are all happy when U.S. soldiers are killed [in Iraq] week in and week out. The killing of U.S. soldiers in Iraq is legitimate and obligatory."

Oops.  

"Oops" can describe much of what's happened in Lebanon since early 2005.  To be ever-so-slightly generous to nitwits like Brooks, in 2005-2006 there was some cause for optimism about reform movements in the Arab countries and the Middle East.  As Economist Middle East editor Max Rodenbeck explains in a review of the new book by WaPo reporter Robin Wright, in those years there were signs of reform from Morocco and Egypt through Lebanon, Syria and Iran.  

The Arab spring, [Wright] says frankly, did not endure...Wright is surely correct in ascribing some part of the blame to America's inept and counterproductive Iraq policy. As numerous interlocutors in the region tell her, not only did the debacle promote extremism and further isolate pro-Western liberals, it alerted people to the terrible risks of toppling tyrants. The Iraq adventure, in Wright's view, may have been the biggest American policy failure of all time. It could yet prove to mark the end of an imperial America's influence in the region, much as France and Britain's catastrophic invasion of Egypt in 1956 demolished the colonial powers' standing and dangerously boosted the fortunes of Egypt's reckless leader, Gamal Abdel Nasser. That is surely a sound judgment.

Our debacle in Iraq has also strengthened and emboldened Iran, and there's little we can do about it.  While many of the claims about Iran made by the Bush administration are B.S., it is true that Iran has become more bellicose, and whether or not they are are trying to weaponize their nuclear program, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad apparently wants people to suspect they are.  His standing in Iran has plummeted along with the economy, but he clings to power by stoking nationalism through the nuclear program.

Nobody knows the full extent of Iran's involvement in Iraq, but it clearly has strong ties to all of the Shia factions.  Last month, when Iraqi prime minister Nuri al-Maliki unsuccessfully tried to subdue the Shiite militias that control Basra, in particular that of Muqtada al-Sadr, it took the intervention of Iran to work out a compromise, suggesting that Iran dictates the balance of power within Iraq.  

Now we have Lebanon.  Instead of shutting up and quietly working with the new Lebanese government in 2005, Bush and his lackeys chose to claim credit for what was mostly an internal reaction to the assassination of Hariri, almost certainly perpetrated by shady forces from Syria.  (Whether the assassination was approved by, or even known by Syrian dictator Bashir Assad is less clear.)  Syria withdrew from Lebanon, but doing so removed a check on the actions of the Lebanese Shiite militia/social movement/political party Hezbollah.  Sure enough, with a year and a half Hezbollah was provoking Israel, with the result a several week war in southern Lebanon which seriously hurt both sides, but from which Hezbollah came out much better in terms of morale with its political base.  

UN resolutions have called on Hezbollah, which fields one of the most formidable fighting forces in the Middle East, to disarm and cede military control in the south to the multi-sectarian Lebanese Army.  The problem is that there isn't any power that can disarm Hezbollah, and it has no interest in forfeiting its military power.  Far from some Cedar Revolution, Lebanon has seemingly intractable problems that are rooted in how power has been apportioned between the sectarian groups since the 1940's.  It was highly unlikely that the withdrawal of Syria from Lebanon was going to usher in a new dawn of Lebanese political harmony, regardless of how badly its population craves peace and a stable social and economic environment.  

With 18 religious groups recognized by Lebanon's government, the situation is complex, but roughly speaking the main divide in the country is between the Sunni Muslims and Druze on one side and the Shiite Muslims on the other side, with the sizable Christian population split between the two camps.  The Sunni/Druze faction controls the government by a narrow margin, but not by enough to really do much.  All sides agree that army chief Michel Suleiman should be president, but the Shia faction is blocking his appointment.  

Whether urged on by the US and France, or acting on its own initiative, last week the ruling coalition decided to crack down on Hezbollah by going after it's phone grid.  Israel jammed cell phones in the zone where it fought Hezbollah in 2006, but Hezbollah coped by relying on a fiber-optic network it had constructed in the south that's independent of the national grid.  Since 2006 Hezbollah has secretively expanded the fiber-optic network to other areas of the country, to allow it to maintain contact between the south, Beirut, the Mount Lebanon region and the Bekaa valley.  In the event of a war with Israel, the government of Lebanon would not control the phone grid depended on by Hezbollah.  

Syria's role in Lebanon has been hard to discern in the last few years.  Iran is clearly closely tied to Hezbollah, but Jumblatt and others appear to have forged ties with Syria in recent years.  Syria is overwhelmingly Sunni, but the Assad clan that rules the country is Alawite, which is viewed by many Muslims, both Sunni and Shia, as an apostasy.  There are no religious affinities between Assad and Hezbollah, and some have speculated that Hezbollah's control of the airport would be required if it lost the patronage of Syria and had to fly in weapons and and people from Iran.  

Upon discovering that the phone system had been installed at Beirut's airport—the only international airport in the country—the government sacked the pro-Hezbollah head of security at the airport on grounds of spying, and demanded that Hezbollah dismantle the phone grid.  

Hezbollah's response:

Hezbollah and its allies decided on Wednesday and Thursday to make a show of force by quickly taking control of and closing Beirut's airport and seaport, and then shutting down all the Hariri-owned media (television, radio and newspaper). The message was clear: Hezbollah could take over all Beirut at any moment it desired. This was probably an inevitable moment, when Hezbollah felt it had to show the government the real balance of power between them.

Hezbollah also occupied neighborhoods across the city, demonstrating the impotence of the Army in controlling a sectarian dispute.  Hezbollah was able to rally it's forces in part by declaring the government a bunch of stooges of the US and Israel, which its audience was inclined to believe, since the US has been touting the government over each of the Shiite groups for over three years.  

Eventually the Army did intervene, by delaying implementation of the parliamentary decrees removing the head of the airport or dismantling the phone network.  Thus, Hezbollah retains the balance of power in Lebanon, just as Iran appears to have attained the balance of power over the Shiite forces in Iraq.  

Given Lebanon's vexed history since the 1940's, one can't honestly say that even if the US had handled the Lebanese situation more adroitly—by taking a smaller, quieter role instead of using internal Lebanese developments as evidence of the salubrious effects on Arab democracy supposedly brought about by our invasion of Iraq—that Lebanon would have avoided a power struggle between Hezbollah and the Sunni-Druze led government.  

But yet again, the Bush administration bumbled in to a complex situation in the Middle East, and made pronouncements that demonstrated its ignorance and dangerous naivety.  And once again, a situation arises where, because of our invasion and occupation of Iraq, we have no credibility to intervene diplomatically or help bring about a situation that would be both better for the local population and less likely to empower declared adversaries of the United States.