Good News From Lebanon
I’ve been negligent in posting about international news, in part because there has been so much local news. However I like to bring forward good news wherever possible, and I just saw some excellent news from Lebanon. As most of you know, Lebanon is a multi ethnic, multi religious, modern state tucked carefully between Syria and Israel. Because of this, everyone and their dog has a hand in the pot in that country. In particular March 14th, the current government, on the one side and Syrian and Iranian backed Hizbullah on the other. (Funny how a common enemy, Israel, will bring adversaries together.) Many in March 14th feel that Hizbullah incited Israel to attack in the disastrous war last year. Unfortunately since Hizbullah has tons of money from Iran, they have been doing a lot of the reconstruction taking away legitimacy from the democratically elected government.
Of course there both sides are backed by numerous conflicting internal groups, making the country very volatile. And to top it all off, the government is currently trying to enact an international tribunal to implicate Syria in the assassination of the Lebanese PM who was trying to remove Lebanon from the Syrian yoke of oppression. This environment has led to much violence and a number of bombings.
The good news is that it appears that the Lebanese police were able to capture the perpetrators of the most heinous of the bombings. This is extremely important for March 14th, though contrary to what Mustapha says I don’t believe that this will end speculation that the Americans and Israelis were behind it (Update: apparently neither does he). If you are into that kind of “the powerful are super-competent” conspiracy theory in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary (see Israel’s war last year and our war in Iraq) something as simple as a confession isn’t going to change your mind. The important thing is that numerous future terrorist plots were stopped.