Lebanon; pundits again ignore most the FACTS.

[LynnTheDem]

In Saturday's NYT, David Brooks makes the case that the recent popular protests in Lebanon against the Syrian occupation are a result of the Bush administration's policies in Iraq. It appears to be a pretty compelling argument.

Of course, if you ignore half the relevant facts like Brooks did, you can quote the same sources and make just the opposite case.

What if Brooks had instead quoted Walid Jumblatt from two months ago, when he described how "we are all happy when U.S. soldiers are killed in Iraq week in and week out. The killing of U.S. soldiers in Iraq is legitimate and obligatory."

As it regards Syria's occupation in Lebanon, our "maximalist" foreign policy didn't work out quite as well in 1991, when we "quietly supported the Syrian assault" against the Lebanese nationalists in power at the time - the same folks who Brooks is celebrating today.

http://thinkprogress.org/index.php?p=341

[The Magistrate]

1. Mr. Brooks, Ma'am

Would seem to have exceeded even his usual quota of foolishness here....

[asjr]

2. Brooks is just earning his under the table paycheck.

[xray s]

3. If you want the facts go here

Sometimes it seems pretty lonely being an American with intellectual curiousity....

http://www.juancole.com/

Tuesday, March 01, 2005
Lebanon Realignment and Syria

It is often pointed out that presidents get too much praise and blame for the economy, since the domestic economy has its own rhythms. We are now going to see everything that happens in the Middle East attributed to George W. Bush, whether he had much to do with it or not (usually not).

What is now Lebanon consists of relatively hilly territory along the eastern Mediterranean coast. The mountains allowed small and often heterodox religious groups to survive, since the mountain inhabitants were relatively isolated and central governments had a difficult time getting hold of them. On the broad plains of Syria, governments could encourage conversion to Islam, then to Shiism, then to Sunnism, and most of the population went along. In the mountains near the coast, the population stuck to its guns. Thus, the Maronite Christians resisted conversion to Islam, as did many Eastern Orthodox Christains. The success the Ismaili government of medieval Egypt had in converting Muslims to Shiite Islam was long-lived, though most of these Shiites went over to the rival "Twelver" branch of Shiism that is now practiced in Iraq and Iran. Likewise, Egyptian Ismailism spun off an esoteric sect, the Druze, who survive in the Shouf Mountains and elsewhere in Lebanon. In the coastal cities and in the Biqaa valley near Syria, the population adopted Sunni Islam with the Sunni revival of Saladin and his successors in the medieval period in Egypt, which continued under the Sunni Ottoman Empire (1516-1918 in Syria). (Egypt has been since the 1100s staunchly Sunni).

In the 1600s and 1700s, the Druze were the most powerful community on the Levantine coast. But in the 1800s the Druze were eclipsed by the Maronite Christians, both because the latter had a population boom and because they grew wealthy off their commercial ties to France and their early adoption of silk growing and modern commerce.

When the French conquered Syria in 1920, they decided to make it easier to rule by dividing it. They carved off what is now Lebanon and gerrymandered it so that it had a Christian majority. In 1920, Maronite Catholics were probably 40 percent of the population, and with Greek Orthodox and others the Christian population came to 51 percent. The Shiites were probably only about 18 percent of the population then. Both under the French Mandate (1920-1946) and in the early years of the Lebanese Republic, the Maronites were the dominant political force. When Lebanon became independent in 1943, the system was set up so that Christians always had a 6 to 5 majority in parliament...(see link for much more)

[alfredo]

5. I recommend that Juan Cole article.

[Clark2008]

6. Why can't the rest of the media - the MSM - learn how to report

like this?
It's informative in his history lesson, gives the correct cause and effect and credits the right chemistry of the times (not the Bush Doctrine).
Is it that the American public doesn't know how to digest a story that isn't told from some viewpoint that inserts the United States or is it that the American media doesn't know how to tell a story of this nature without inserting the United States, whether this country had anything to do with it or not?

[chlamor]

7. I Think That's Ridiculous

that Juan Cole would have the nerve to place something in historical context. Next he will be suggesting there are outside influences promoting these spontaneous rallies and that these pesky student groups get funding from the NED,IRI and the Open Society. Wait, is that Ukraine I'm thinking of. Democracy on the march.....

Thanks for your post and link. Juan knows.

[paineinthearse]

4. Mr. Brooks is a pompous ass mouthpiece for *

Hope he chokes on a pretzel.