Funny---one hears nothing about Syria and Lebanon for weeks or months, and then twice in the same day, I hear
from two different fronts, some re-assertion of this region as an important political front: Today a rather eloquent and serious Lebanese -AMerican, who has lived here since the early 80s brought up this very subject in a call to Bob Grant's radio show,proposed it as something that should have some priority in the Bush Administration's MidEast policy (pressure on Syria) and nostalgically pined for the days of his youth in the 70s, when Beirut was not the occupied and oppressed place it is now, but was a center for excitement and culture....and this is about the third time I've heard that in the last few months, once from a limo driver who took me to Newark Airport. I never knew this about Beirut, because all my adult associations with it only start at about the time our Marines were carbombed there. Prague and Budapest were the same way before Commie tyrants made those cities their own.
I know guys who worked in Saudi & the Gulf in the 60s and Beirut was a favorite for R&R.