The American Spectator

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(Page 5 of 14)

p> LEBANESE RESPONSIBILITY br> Re: Jed Babbin's Israel as George Bush : /p>

I must take some exception to the commonplace, recited again in these pages by Mr. Babbin, which holds that the people of Lebanon are powerless to suppress the Party of God's armed forces. This notion seems to have insinuated itself into the list of givens -- sort of like "jobs Americans won't do." It doesn't withstand even casual scrutiny.

I would remind everyone that the residents of Lebanon, in their several confessional and political aggregates, have demonstrated astounding ferocity in combat with one another since 1976. They have managed to kill nearly 185,000 of themselves in their civil conflict, this in a population of less than 4 million. The civil war period provides ample evidence of the extraordinary ability of the private sector in Lebanon to procure weapons, including heavy weapons, and to recruit, train and operate combat forces in all environments in that country. The people of Lebanon have amply demonstrated their courage, capabilities, and willingness to sacrifice in advancing their political and social aims through some of the most ferocious combat seen in the Middle East.

We are left to conclude that the only thing that has kept them from confronting Hizb Allah is a lack of the desire to do so. Hizb Allah has grown into the golem it is today because the people of Lebanon, in the aggregate, chose to allow this to happen.

Yes, the people of Lebanon made a choice. They decided they preferred the consequences of not confronting Hizb Allah to the confrontation itself. Maronites, Greek Orthodox, Shi'a, Sunni, Druze -- each day that passed without one or more of these confessional sectors acting with traditional Lebanese force against Hizb Allah was a day in which the national consensus was acceptance of the consequences that organization's presence and growing pre-eminence would surely bring.

p>The bill has now come due, delivered, inevitably, by Israel. The weeping and wailing over the destruction of civil infrastructure in Lebanon seems quite disingenuous: the Lebanese thought it was more important to construct the famous bridges and roads than to invest in sovereignty and the rule of law. They are now, perhaps, less convinced of the wisdom of that investment strategy. Perhaps their priorities were a little off. br> -- Paul Kotik br> Plantation, Florida /p>

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