Posted on 01/04/2007 9:20:24 PM PST by Valin
HH: We begin this hour with Michael Totten, I think perhaps America’s most informed writer about Lebanon, just back from Lebanon. Michael Totten, welcome back to the Hugh Hewitt Show.
MT: Hi, thanks for having me, Hugh.
HH: I have just posted over at Hughhewitt.com a link to your site, and I titled it by what you wrote in your most recent dispatch, “So much of what passes for politics in Lebanon is simply sectarian passion or violence.” Can you explain that for people?
MT: Sure. Okay, Lebanon is basically divided into three major groups, all of whom are a minority. There are Christians, which are roughly 35-40% of the country, and then the rest are Muslims, and they’re divided roughly between Sunni and Shia, the Shia slightly outnumber the Sunni. And Lebanon works on a power sharing arrangement, where the Christians always have the presidency, the Sunni Muslims always have the prime ministership, and the speaker of parliament is a Shia. And since the founding of the republic, they’ve been jockeying for power, each at one time trying to dominate the others, which was a major reason for the civil war between 1975 and 1990. And the Sunni Muslims and the Christians have more or less come to an agreement now to share power and to no longer fight over it, although the Shia have been sort of pecked down and pushed aside by both the Sunni and the Christians forever. And Hezbollah, one way of looking at them now, is that well, they have their own private army, and no one else does, and this is sort of a bit of revenge against the others, and they’re trying to accumulate as much power in Lebanon as possible.
HH: Now I want to spend the bulk of our time…we have you for half an hour, talking about Hezbollah. But before we get there, I do think, I want to pause on the Aounists, because they’re always messing up Americans’ ability to go on, because you defined it nicely as Christian and Sunni versus Shia…
MT: Yeah.
HH: But then you’ve got Michael Aoun, who’s out there with Hezbollah. Why and who is he, and how powerful?
MT: Well, Michel Aoun, he’s a Maronite Catholic, and he used to be possibly the most popular Christian leader in Lebanon. He was briefly prime minister during, at the end of the civil war, even though the prime minister was supposed to be…I’m sorry, the Christians are supposed to have the presidency, and the Sunnis are supposed to have the prime ministership, but Michel Aoun was prime minister at the end of the civil war for complicated reasons. Basically, the Lebanese government effectively ceased to exist during the war, and somehow, he ended up in this position. And he was also general of the army. And he was the last anti-Syrian holdout. His group were the last to surrender to Syrian domination of Lebanon at the end of the war, and he was exiled to France as a result. And he spent until last year, this time in France, living on a farm on the outside of Paris. Now after the Syrians were pushed out last year, Michel Aoun came back, and he found that he was sort of pushed aside by the Christian and Sunni elite of the country, and he wanted to be president. And his only way that he could see of actually getting the presidency was to align himself electorally with whoever else was being excluded by the Christian and Sunni elite. And the only game in town was Hezbollah. So his alliance with Hezbollah is mostly tactical, and has really very little to do with ideology.
HH: Can he switch back quickly? Could he rejoin? Would that allow him to return to a preeminent place among the Sunni and Christian alliance?
MT: Well, I’m sure that they would rather have him with them, than against him, if being against them means he’s with Hezbollah. But if he were to try to rejoin the March 14th coalition, March 14th being the anti-Syrian side, I’m actually not sure what happens, because he has burned his bridges with pretty much everybody. And his popularity has disintegrated.
HH: Wow. Does he provide Hezbollah a fig leaf, though?
MT: Yeah, that’s pretty much what he does. I mean, that’s why Hezbollah wants him, so that they can say look, it’s not just the Shia who are opposed to the government. It is also some of the Christians. But Michel Aoun’s got 20% of the Christians at most at this point.
HH: And that’s still not an insignificant number.
MT: No, it isn’t insignificant. But you should keep in mind, though, that these Aounist Christians, they have what they call an understanding with Hezbollah, and one point of that understanding is that Hezbollah needs to be disarmed, and mainstreamed into Lebanese society.
HH: Okay. Now give us the details of your last trip to Lebanon. When did you get into the country? When did you come home?
MT: I came home just before Christmas, and I was there for three weeks.
HH: Okay, and so, you know Hezbollah up close and personal, and in fact, you’ve been beaten up by them a little bit, and your account of hanging…
MT: Well, I haven’t been physically beaten. I’ve been threatened by them.
HH: I thought they jostled you here a couple of times.
MT: Well, I mean, they have physically forced me to move from where I was standing, but they didn’t actually like assault me.
HH: All right. Explain to people what Hezbollah’s role in Lebanon is right now, and this is really chilling, by the way, I must tell you, Michael Totten. I’ve linked it at Hughhewitt.com. Your conversation with the young teenagers, your description of their security forces, your detailing of their ambitions, Hezbollah is a menace, and just tell people about it.
MT: Well, basically, like I said before, what they really want, more than anything else, is as much power in Lebanon as they can acquire. And although they are an Islamist party, their main goal at this point, I don’t believe, is to turn Lebanon into an Islamist state, because they know it’s impossible. For one reason, more than a third of the country are Christians, and they will fight them to the end if they try to create Lebanon as an Islamist state. But also, there is the fact that the Sunni don’t want it, either, and if they did, they would be arguing about which kind of Islamist state to have. But also, the truth is that the majority of the Shia also do not want an Islamist state in Lebanon, and they never have. And so, while Hezbollah used to say that they wanted to turn Lebanon into basically, you know, an Iranian style state, but there’s just no way that they can do this, and they’ve had internal arguments about this, and Hassan Nasrallah is actually more moderate than the previous leaders of Hezbollah, and the previous leaders were pushed aside, because they wanted to Islamicize the entire country. And Nasrallah was chosen because he was seen as more pragmatic and more moderate, I mean, moderate, really only compared to who was running the show previously. So what they really want is they want Shia power in Lebanon as much as possible. And the reason, the only way they can get it is to be the only political party in the country that has an army. And the only way that they can justify having an army is if they are in a constant state of war with the Israelis.
(snip)
January 02, 2007
Michael Totten's Mid East Journal
Hanging With Hezbollah
http://www.michaeltotten.com
interesting. thank u for the post
I thought so
Audio link
Michael Totten, Zach Wamp
http://www.townhall.com/MediaPlayer/AudioPlayer.aspx?ContentGuid=c569c375-1936-4d70-b772-59921fb6115b
Hewitt: Hour 1 - Lebanon blogger Michael Totten updates us on the status in that country after returning from a three week stay. Later, Congressman Zach Wamp's reading list.
Michael Totten is a big gay fool. When Israel sought to defend herself this summer Michael Totten got the shrieking vapors big time. He is a worthless fag.
Good post. Thanks.
Sounds like Lebanon may be only one incident away from civil war. If this happens, Israel needs to reenter South Lebanon & help wipe out Hezbollah for good. It'll never happen though.
Thank you very much for your input. Rest assured I will give it all the consideration it merits.
High volume. Articles on Israel can also be found by clicking on the Topic or Keyword Israel, WOT
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