House of the rising Moonglum

I don’t know how many of you are keeping up with news from lebanon. Ever since the Israelis invaded, I have been reading lebanese blogs as well as Iraqi blogs to get a bit of an inside view. The more I learn about Lebanon the more I am enraptured with the country. It is an interesting place filled with many different people with many different views. It is also a much more educated country than some in the region. I’m afraid that this may be the beginning of the end for Lebanon though.

For those who haven’t been keeping up, lebanon has many different cultural divisions, but one particularly visible slice is controlled by Hizbollah and Syria. Syria directly ruled the country for years until their assassination of a popular anti-syria leader caused a popular uprising which forced the syrian military out of Lebanon and a new government into power. More recently, many of the other slices blame Hizbollah for instigating the war with Israel and want them to keep their noses out of politics. Very recently a tribunal came back basically blaming Syria for the assassination. Of course the government wants it validated and Hizbollah doesn’t. The problem is Hizbollah is the major military power in Lebanon currently. So the government has been spending huge amounts of time trying to figure a way through this mess, and the president (Saad Hariri) was delivering a conciliatory speech when one of the Christian ministers was assassinated. He paused the press conference to receive the news and then came back on and said, “There is nothing left to discuss with the killer Syrian regime. The international tribunal is between us, and let whatever happens happen.”

So much for peaceful negotiation. I am just afraid for the Lebanese people and what Hizbollah will do to them.

Update: Oh good, CNN has finally deemed this news worthy.