The Wall, '05

Deacon from Powerline notes this piece from the WaPo.

See if you can tell why it's important.

I'll give you a hint - it comes in a part of the article wherewriter, David Ignatius, interviews Walid Jumblatt.

The article makes a cursory attempt to explain Jumblatt, the leader of Lebanon's Druze community.

I've said it many times on this site, and history bears it out; there is no more dangerous occupation in the world than "Moderate Arab"; the radicals kill you before they go after the Jews and the Americans. Jumblatt knows this, and in many ways serves as a weather vane; the Druze are like the Poles of the eastern Mediterranean, caught between everyone in Lebanon, a country where radical communities gather like the Cantina on Tatooine.

Weathervane. Remember this. Ignatius says:

Jumblatt dresses like an ex-hippie, in jeans and loafers, but he maintains the exquisite manners of a Lebanese aristocrat. Over the years, I've often heard him denouncing the United States and Israel, but these days, in the aftermath of Hariri's death, he's sounding almost like a neoconservative. He says he's determined to defy the Syrians until their troops leave Lebanon and the Lahoud government is replaced.

"It's strange for me to say it, but this process of change has started because of the American invasion of Iraq," explains Jumblatt. "I was cynical about Iraq. But when I saw the Iraqi people voting three weeks ago, 8 million of them, it was the start of a new Arab world." Jumblatt says this spark of democratic revolt is spreading. "The Syrian people, the Egyptian people, all say that something is changing. The Berlin Wall has fallen. We can see it."

The myopically focused mind - I'll be charitable - chants "the war can never be worth it", while ignoring the real effects our liberation of Iraq is having in that part of the world. Lebanon - for two and a half decades an intractable quagmire - might be on the brink of sorting itself out (at the expense of terror-supporting dictatorship Syria) solely because of the example of democracy popping up next door. When Walid Jumblatt - a human pilot fish if ever one existed - is casting his lot with the West, something important is going on.

Expect the left to:

1. Poo-Pooh this until...
2. ...they find it expedient to claim credit for it. See: Fall of Berlin Wall

Posted by Mitch at February 23, 2005 08:37 AM | TrackBack