| Lebanon's Liberation Approaches |  |
FrontPageMagazine.com | February 22, 2005
Posted on 02/22/2005 4:47:42 AM PST by SJackson
The fate of Syria was in good measure determined on January 21, 1994. That’s when, driving at a too-high speed to the Damascus airport for a skiing trip abroad, Basil al-Assad crashed the Mercedes he was driving, killing himself and his passengers.
The accident had great consequence because Basil, then 31, was being groomed to succeed his father, Hafez al-Assad, as dictator of Syria. All indications pointed to the equestrian, martial, and charismatic Basil making for a formidable ruler.
After the car crash, his younger brother Bashar got yanked back from his ophthalmologic studies in London and enrolled in a rapid course to prepare as Syria’s next strongman. He perfunctorily ascended the military ranks and on his father’s demise in June 2000 he, sure enough, succeeded to the presidential throne.
(This made Bashar the second dynastic dictator, with Kim Jong-il of North Korea having been the first in 1994. The third one, being Faure Gnassingbé of Togo, emerged earlier this month. Others sons waiting in the wings include Gamal Mubarak of Egypt, Saifuddin Qadhafi of Libya, and Ahmed Salih of Yemen. Saddam Hussein’s pair never made it.)
The possibility existed that Bashar, due to his brief Western sojourn and scientific orientation, would dismantle his father’s totalitarian contraption; Bashar’s early steps suggested he might do just that, but then he quickly reverted to his father’s autocratic methods – either because of his own inclinations or because he remained under the sway of his father’s grandees.
His father’s methods, yes, but not his skills. The elder Assad was a tactical genius, even if his rule ultimate failed (he never regained the Golan Heights, never came close to destroying Israel, and rode Syria’s economy and culture into the ground). The younger Assad combines strategic blindness with tactical ineptitude.
Within months of Bashar’s accession, questions arose about his ability to retain control over Lebanon; not long after, his ability to hold on to power in Syria itself came under doubt. The Syrian government’s rush to the side of Saddam Hussein just as he was ousted made eyebrows rise with wonder. Bashar’s pattern of promising one thing to U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, then instantly breaking his word caused general bafflement.
These mistakes prompted passage of two landmark anti-regime measures. In December 2003, the U.S. government passed the Syrian Accountability Act that punished Damascus for its malfeasance. In September 2004, the U.N. Security Council passed Resolution 1559 that called on all “foreign forces” to withdraw their troops from Lebanon, a clear reference to the Syrian troops that arrived in 1976.
These steps encouraged leading Lebanese politicians to demand the withdrawal of Syrian forces. Most notably, Druze leader Walid Junblatt and Sunni leader Rafik Hariri took this fateful step, thereby threatening to deprive Damascus of both its sense of territorial achievement and its golden Lebanese economic goose.
There can be little doubt that Assad was behind the massive (probably underground) blast on Feb. 14 that gouged a 20-yard wide crater, killing Hariri and sixteen others. With his flair for incompetence, Assad presumably decided that the former prime minister had to die for this betrayal. But, quite contrary to Assad’s presumed expectations, far from reducing pressures on Syria to leave Lebanon, the atrocity magnified and intensified them.
Assad’s response – pretend denouncing the murder, putting a relative in charge of the intelligence services, purchasing SA-18 anti-aircraft missiles from Russia, and announcing a mutual defense pact with Tehran – points to his cluelessness about the trouble he has stirred up for himself.
For the first time in three decades, Lebanon now seems within reach of regaining its independence. “I don’t see how Syria can stay now,” observes Lebanon’s former president, Amin Gemayel.
The reassertion of Lebanon’s independence will fittingly reward an unsung steadfastness. The Lebanese may have once squandered their sovereignty, starting with the Syrian invasion of 1976 and culminating in the nearly complete occupation of 1990, but they showed dignity and bravery under occupation. Against the odds, they asserted a civil society, kept alive the hope of freedom, and retained a sense of patriotism.
Lebanon’s independence will also serve as a large nail in the coffin of the brutal, failed, and unloved Assad dynasty. If things go right, Syria’s liberation should follow on Lebanon’s.
Thus can a mere traffic accident influence history.
Daniel Pipes (www.DanielPipes.org) is director of the Middle East Forum and author of Miniatures (Transaction Publishers).
The arrogant Basil's inability to keep his driving within the limits set on it by his lack of any kind of recognizable talent put the skids under Half-Arsed Al Assad's scheme to head up a petty-dictatorial Harry-Lee-like dynasty [Which petty tyranny the good Mr Pipes overlooked] and poor silly chinless wonder, Baby Bashar, had to fill in.
It's beginning to look like a bad century for middle-eastern autocrats.
If you'd like to be on or off this middle east/political ping list, please FR mail me.
I hope Lebanon finally will be liberated from the Muslim stronghold.
Lebannon, Turkey, Israel, Iraq.
I'd say Syria has a little problem.
Afghanistan!
And, yes, Lybia (to a certain extent).
Think of Afghanistan and Iraq as falling dominos.
Once you get a few dominos started, you don't have to push the rest that hard, they just start to go down all natural-like.
Freedom and democracy are breaking out all over the Middle-East. From smack dab in the middle of all of it, the Iraqui example is causing democratic changes in Saudi Arabia, Iran, and and now Lebanon. This is like watching the collapse of Soviet Communism all over again.
God Bless George W. Bush. Good bless him for his leadership, his vision and his courage.
Bush should have followed my battle plan in 2003.
With a fleet in the Mediterranean and Turkey stalling, I would have invaded Iraq through Syria and Lebanon.
The dominoes are falling even faster than anyone could have imagined.... It is looking like GWB will go down in history among the greatests. This has got to drive the leftists absolutely bonkers.
Yes SIR, the desire for freedom + the righteous might of the USA military is awesome and wonderful to watch.
I hope and pray you're right, but remember in any battleplan the enemy gets a vote.
Get ready for the counterattack.
Oh no one believes that they will go quietly... darkness and opression rarely do. Communists will attempt to revive themselves in these new and forming governments of the middle east.... other enemies of liberty as well... However the genie is exiting the bottle.
Self Governance has the middle east in its cross hairs, the more connected this part of the world becomes with the outside the less these regimes will be able to hold back the will of the people and the force of self rule.
"But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed."
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