Posted on 03/09/2005 5:56:06 PM PST by bamaborn
BEIRUT, Lebanon, March 9 - Nine days after Lebanon's pro-Syrian prime minister, Omar Karami, was forced to quit under pressure by opponents of Syria's occupation, he was voted back into the post on Wednesday by the Lebanese Parliament.
Mr. Karami was chosen by 71 deputies out of a current total of 126, according to the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation television. The president, Émile Lahoud, is bound by the choice of Parliament - which is dominated by pro-Syrian deputies - and will appoint him on Thursday.
The nomination of a Syria supporter angered those who have sought an end to the influence of Damascus in Lebanon and threw the political system into deeper turmoil. Opposition members of Parliament have said they would not join a government that failed to meet their demands, which include the dismissal of the Lebanese security chiefs and the full withdrawal of Syrian troops.
Parliamentary elections are scheduled for May, but with a purely pro-Syrian government in charge of setting up the election, accusations of impropriety and gerrymandering are bound to create further tension.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
With the great help of President Bush, the Lebanese people will have their freedom very soon.
What an interesting thread! Thanks for all of your insights.
Yeah, but how much power does Hezbollah/Syria have over there? The number really means nothing. Saddam only needed one seat to rule the country--his throne. If Hezbollah gains 20 seats come election time and the Syrian Gestapo aren't running the scenes behind closed doors then it will still be a freer country.
Why did Syria invade Lebanon in the first place?
To colonize and control Lebanon, all this under the excuse of bringing stability to Lebanon during its civil war (1975-1990), that they played a huge role in keeping it alive and destructive in 15 years.
Why haven't the Lebanese gotten rid of Syria before now?
Fear. But now with the 150,000 of our soldiers in Iraq, 8 millions Iraqis defying terror to vote for their freedom, the Lebanese people got very encouraged and they want to get their freedom. The Bush doctrine of spreading freedom and democracy in the Greater Middle East is working very well.
Is Hezbollah a quasi-government organization that has control of the money?
Hizballah is a terrorist group created by the Iranian and protected by the Syrians. They are way overrated and they are so delusional about being responsible for Israel withdrawal from Lebanon. They have support of half of the Muslin Shiite in Lebanon which amount to no more than 17% of the total Lebanese population.
What does Assad get out of being in Lebanon?
Mostly financial extortion (please see my post # 40). Plus control over Hizballah terror group that can create some instability with Israel.
Had Bashar Asad's father still been there, the streets of Beirut would have been red with blood. He killed 20,000 of his own people in Homs and Hama (Syrian cities) for their rebellion. He is responsible for over 150,000 Lebanese deaths. One of my regrets is that he died of old age. He also was extremely smart =>deadly combination. I remember how he shelled us civilians in Beirut for months in 1978 and how useless the UN was even then.
Is George Bush gonna have to choke a b*tch?
I've heard it said lately that Lebanon now constitutes the bulk of the overall Syrian economy, and that without Lebanon, Syria has precious little left to form its own economy.
Is that a fair statement?
He feels that the Lebanese people have "heard the call" of President Bush and have been empowered by it, and will not back down.
What will count are the elections in May.
Good responses jveritas. Apart from extortion Syria also gets the following from Lebanon:
-Taxes (part of the extortion). There's also $200 in import taxes that's received out of every container that gets into Lebanon. Some of these millions of dollars go to Syria.
-Money from cultivation of drugs in the Bekaa valley
-Money repatriated from the estimated ONE MILLION illegal Syrian workers who work in Lebanon and repatriate every single penny to Syria without paying any taxes (they go back to Syria on the weekend and come back with their own food).
-Politically Syria wants to use Lebanon and its control of Hezbollah as bargaining chips to get Israel to give it back the Golan Heights that Syria lost when it attacked Israel and lost.
-Syria never recognized Lebanon as an independent country.
-One misconception has been that the Christians asked for Syria because the President at the time did so and he was a Christian. There is debate about this as he probably was paid off just like most politicians in Lebanon.
I remember how he shelled us civilians in Beirut for months in 1978 and how useless the UN was even then.
It was very brutal in 1978 but even more brutal in 1989 and 1990 when the Syrian terrorist regime bombed the Christian sector of Lebanon in ten of thousands of shells.
The UN has been a joke not only in Lebanon but all over the world. Unfortunately we need them from time to time to make some resolution like 1559 that calls on Syria immediate and complete withdrawal from Lebanon, but on the other hand we are fortunate that we have President Bush who makes these resolutions become facts.
What? Oh, sheesh.
Though the question may have been rhetorical, I will give it a shot.
1973: Israel (US ally) cleans clock of Syria (Soviet client state).
1974: US gets new President due to resignation of incumbent, with next scheduled election due for 1976.
1975-1976: Civil War erupts within Lebanon. [Question: Were there any agents provocateurs there, perhaps?] Syria intervenes to *stabilize* (read: apply Soviet influence to) Lebanon.
Of course the internal social, political and cultural complexity of Lebanon makes this explanation seem trivial, but, in reality, the intervention was in one respect an attempt on the part of the Soviets (acting through their client) to limit the geopolitical advantage to be gained by the US (with a different Chief Executive, to be tested now and again) by virtue of Israel's sweeping victory in the Yom Kippur War.
However the worst part as I indicated in my post # 40 and winner3000 indicated in post # 49, is the great theft ,extortion, and drug trafficking from Lebanon, where the Syrian terrorist regime has been getting its billions of dollars for many, many years.
He said that the number of people at that demonstration was all that Hezbollah could muster, and thought that freedom would prevail without civil war. (He told Brit that things had changed much inside Lebanon since the 1980's).
The Berlin Wall has fallen..........and the trumpet of freedom once sounded, never calls retreat (I heard a great world leader say that recently :o).
Even much worse than that. Half of the people in the "terror rally" yesterday were not Lebanese shiites but they were Syrians workers in Lebanon ( 1 millions Syrians work in Lebanon), in addition of tens of thousands Syrians were bused all the way from Syria, and tens of thousands of Palestinians who came from their refugee camps in Beirut. Moreover Satellite pictures of the square where the terror rally was held yesterday give a maximum of 280,000 protesters (over half non Lebanese) and not 1 million or 1.5 million the way the Syrian propaganda and Hizballah terror group was saying.
The Berlin Wall has fallen..........and the trumpet of freedom once sounded, never calls retreat (I heard a great world leader say that recently :o).
God bless President Bush and God bless our troops who are fighting to protect our freedom and our way of life and fighting to spread freedom and democracy in the Greater Middle East.
God bless America.
Interesting how sometimes the remnants of old battles carry for so long. Syria is in many ways another legacy of the cold war, finally coming about into the wind.
Like the fabled japanese soldier marooned on a deserted island, yet still fighting the war years after its end... so remains Syria.
You give a great example on how things aren't black and white in Lebanon and then you contradict yourself in your last sentence by saying that things are black and white.
That would give them a reason to bring their troops out of Lebanon.
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