Colorful Journey to Nowhere

Omar Karami, who resigned nine days ago, has been renominated as prime minister by Lebanon's pro-Syria parliament:

A total of 69 deputies from the 128-member chamber named Karami in consultations with President Emile Lahoud, the sources said. The pro-Syrian president was now bound to appoint Karami, who resigned last week, as prime minister-designate.

Meanwhile, pro-government demonstrations spontaneously erupt in Damascus and witnesses see signs of Syrian redeployment from town of Batroun, but in the surest sign yet that the opposition is finished, former SOS Madeleine Albright has joined the chorus of officials calling for Syrian withdrawal.

Comments

[Gary Gunnels]

Tim Cavanaugh,

Ha ha ha! That fucking made my day.

[Gary Gunnels]

The Albright dig that is. 🙂

[Andrew]

This is where President Kerry would have blinked. The local fascists staged their march on Beirut, the occupiers re-shuffle their troos, the quislings resuffle their cabinet...and Kerry blinks.

Not Bush. By mid-year Syria is out and hezbollah is disarming. By the end of the year, Baby Assad is on his way to Venezuela or Grenoble.

[Michael Young]

Opposition finished, Tim? A trifle off there, even if it did set up your joke. I would advise waiting for next week.

[a]

Michael, after your barrage of posts right after Hariri's assasination, we have not heard from you. We missed you man. Just curious, what is your take on yesterday's demonstration? How many were bussed in from Damascus?

"I would advise waiting for next week."

What is going to happen next week? Another assasination 🙂

[SPD]

This is where President Kerry would have blinked. The local fascists staged their march on Beirut, the occupiers re-shuffle their troos, the quislings resuffle their cabinet...and Kerry blinks.

Not Bush. By mid-year Syria is out and hezbollah is disarming. By the end of the year, Baby Assad is on his way to Venezuela or Grenoble.

Merely assumptions, my friend. Merely assumptions.

[joe]

A Michael Young blog post from March 3:

"The End
Now the Saudis have asked the Syrians to leave Lebanon, and soon. It's the end, whatever Bashar Assad does. All the props sustaining Syrian power in Lebanon have crumbled, except the resort to brute force; and even there you can kill Rafik Hariri and say it wasn't you. You can say that the bungled assassination attempt against Marwan Hamadeh, a Hariri ally, last October wasn't you either. You can even say that you had nothing to do with the deployment of armed thugs in Beirut belonging to an Islamist group created by the Syrian regime to fight the Muslim Brotherhood (a deployment for the purpose of preventing a meeting between U.S. envoy David Satterfield and Lebanon's Sunni mufti). But can you really say that about any possible new victims?

It's over. From Damascus there is news of gloom and uncertainty, desperation and anticipation of the worst, even talk of a coup, though no one quite seems to know who would organize it."

Michael Young, a comment on March 9:

"Opposition finished, Tim? A trifle off there, even if it did set up your joke. I would advise waiting for next week."

[joe]

"local fascists staged their march on Beirut"

When half a million people hold an inconvenient march, they are fascists. When actual fascists (the Phalangists) join into a much smaller protest, they are the vanguard of democracy.

[SM]

Phalangists=fascists, Hezbollah=regular blokes. Is there a white-paper out there somewhere which describes the world according to liberal demonology, joe ?

[joe]

Uh, yeah, SM. That's where I learned that liberals all wuv Saddam Hussein. Tool.

This is obvious a difficult concept for hawks to grasp, but finding flaw with one side doesn't equate to support for the other.

Nowhere did I say that Hezbollah were "regular blokes." Nowhere did I imply it. Noticing that the Phalangists carefully modelled themselves after Franco's fascists does not make one supportive of Hezbollah.

[Andrew]

joe

I understand the Student Phalangue were part of yesterday's demo. Generally, the more sectarian elements in every community benefit from the current system...sort of an affirmative action theocracy, which may be why you like it!

[Peter K.]

At least Hezbollah didn't pull an IRA and offer to shoot the Hariri bombers to deflect the heat.

But Young's NYTimes op-ed is right in pointing out Hezbollah is making a poor choice. It's suicidal in fact. Their Shia brethren are taking over Iraq so why do they need Syria to protect them from the Big Bad Wolf?

Joe, forget the Phalangists. Here's the recent chain of events:
1)constitution unilaterally changed to keep Syrian quisling in charge against the wishes of a large percentage of the population.
2)Sunni leader assassinated.

Who's behaving badly? Anything goes when resisting the Americans?

[Gary Gunnels]

Apparently the war in Iraq has been very good for at least one country - Jordan:

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=572&ncid=572&e=3&u=/nm/20050309/lf_nm/iraq_jordan_dc_1

[SM]

"Uh, yeah, SM. That's where I learned that liberals all wuv Saddam Hussein. Tool."

You know it's really "churlish" to refer to people who disagree with you as "tools", right ?
Still, in this whole discussion you seem very easily provoked into pointing out the origins & unpleasant nature of one faction (ie the Phalangists) only. It's almost as if you were worried that Syrian withdrawal might result in a third Bush term.
Very, very churlish ...

[Yo]

I'm going to piggy back on Gary's opener, and say that I too loved the Albright gag. She did yomens work back with BJC. Those were the days.

[zeroentitlement]

>>>This is where President Kerry would have blinked...Not Bush. By mid-year Syria is out and hezbollah is disarming.