Tom Friedman called the events in Lebanon
the Beirut Tea Party.That might have been a premature. Today the pro-Syrian Primeminister was
reinstated in his office. This comes after hundreds of thousands of Lebanese shiites demonstrated against the withrawel of the Syrian forces.
This actually forced the U.S. to accept a legitimate role of
Hezbollah in the future political process:
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. [...]
Hezbollah has military and political wings. While it has a militia of 20,000 troops and is also said by American and Western and Israeli intelligence agencies to funnel funds from Iran to anti-Israeli militant groups, it runs an array of social programs for Shiites. It also has 13 seats in Lebanon's Parliament and is aiming to expand its representation there in the May elections.
At least, it shows some kind of flexibility. Then again, when you deal with a known terrorist group like Hezbollah you are back to old-style Middle Eastern Politics.
So there is no democratic make-over in the way the Bush administration tried to promote and the hack Tom Friedman buys, because he wants to shy away from his dishonest bad journalism in the context of the war in Iraq.