America's
Red Line is a 'Syrian Halabja' (L'Orient Le Jour,
Lebanon)
"A
few years ago, the administration of George W. Bush was deliberately engaged in
a false diagnosis of pregnancy - weapons of mass destruction allegedly held by
Saddam Hussein - and America gave birth to an unfair and devastating war
against Iraq. Barack Obama learned the lesson well - but did he learn it too
well? ... Will we have to wait for a Syrian reissue of the horror of Halabja, the Kurdish town
that Saddam so blithely gassed, in order to cross the red line?"
Hezbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah, staunch ally of Syria's Bashar al-Assad and leader of much of the non-Christian portion of Lebanon's current government. Hezbullah, considered a terrorist group by the U.S. and much of the world, was according to Israel, the target of its attack last night on Syrian territory. Israel says it bombed Iranian missiles destined for Hezbullah.
Can one be half pregnant? Washington seems
far from properly deciding the issue. A few years ago, the administration of
George W. Bush was deliberately engaged in a false diagnosis of pregnancy -
weapons of mass destruction allegedly held by Saddam Hussein - and America gave
birth to an unfair and devastating war against Iraq. Barack Obama learned the
lesson well - but did he learn it too well?
The dithering of the United States would be
laughable indeed if we weren't dealing with the appalling question of whether
the Assad regime used chemical weapons against rebels in Syria. To this
question, for the moment, Washington responds vaguely and in terms that leave
great room for doubt, and which could serve as a replacement for the word yaani [something
like "so-so"]. Still, according to U.S. intelligence, the use of
toxic gas, including saran, may have taken place on a "small scale"(?).
In other words, the threshold set by the world's sole superpower has yet to be
reached. Will we have to wait for a Syrian reissue of the horror of Halabja, the Kurdish town that
Saddam so blithely gassed, in order to cross the red line?
Posted By
Worldmeets.US
But to stay on the subject of birthing and obstetrics
in the game of nations, aren't we Lebanese entitled to be offended by all these
semantic niceties, since it appears we are unable to abort the disasters that
threaten to be born in our own country?
From the point that the war of others was
conducted on Lebanese ground, the deployment of armed fighters to Syria has managed
to lead us, perhaps for the worse, to the point of having inter-Lebanese clashes on
foreign soil. Particularly regrettable - and highly explosive, moreover, is the
slogan of jihad relied upon for such mistakes. It is the jihad that Sunni
extremists have come to rejoin with the pioneer in the field, Hezbullah, which
is massively involved on the side of the Baathist
dictatorship. And which, to rebuild a resistance of purity dedicated to the
fight against Israel, once more jeopardizes Lebanese national security by
sending drones to tickle the most ticklish of enemies, even if this time, it is
refraining from claiming responsibility for the operation.
In a country like ours, the alibi of jihad
is doubly pernicious. It poorly disguises the priority of a foreign powers'
guidelines [Iran], to the detriment of the national interest. And it outrageously
violates the multi-communal formula that led to the birth of Lebanon. Ultimately,
maternal loyalty and loyalty to motherland are the same: the two are not suited
to half-measures.
