Reality: Lebanon Is Key Ally In War On Terror
IBD:
Mideast: Long before it meddled in Iraq, Iran and its puppet Hezbollah set its sights on Lebanon. Beirut is once again under assault, and if we care about fighting terrorism with democracy, we’d better pay attention.
Few would consider Lebanon an ally in the war on terror. But its people and elected government are fending off an assault on its multicultural democracy by a terrorist group that would take it away and turn it into an Islamofascist base camp for Iran and Syria’s war on the West.
At least a dozen were killed as gunmen loyal to Hezbollah and other Syrian- and Iranian-backed groups took the streets last week against the pro-Western government of Prime Minister Fouad Saniora. Saniora was holed up at his office in downtown Beirut.
A rocket-propelled grenade slammed into the fence surrounding the heavily guarded residence of Lebanese leader Saad Hariri, son of the late former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri. The elder Hariri was assassinated in February 2005 in a massive car-bomb explosion that a U.N. commission has determined was planned and supported by operatives of the Syrian government of Bashar Assad.
The latest Hezbollah-inspired clash was triggered by an announcement by Lebanon’s telecommunications minister that Iran was helping Hezbollah set up an illegal telecom network capable of listening in on any phone made in the beleaguered country. The government branded the network, which includes spy cameras to monitor flights and cargo areas at Beirut International airport, “an attack on the sovereignty of the state” and threatened to shut it down.
Brig. Gen. Wafiq Shuqeir was earlier removed as commander of security at the Beirut airport for reportedly permitting the Hezbollah spy cameras to be set up at the airport, which also were said to be used to monitor the movement of anti-Syrian Lebanese politicians and foreign dignitaries. Eight members of the anti-Syrian March 14 coalition have been assassinated since 2005.
Hezbollah has kept its weapons in violation of U.N. Resolution 1559. Its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, said the network was “the most important part of the weapons of the resistance” and added Hezbollah had a duty to defend those weapons. “The decision (by the Saniora government) is tantamount to a declaration of war . . . on the resistance and its weapons in the interest of America and Israel,” he said.
It is Hezbollah that long ago declared war. Hezbollah and its sponsors have long sought the overthrow of Lebanon’s democracy and have indeed created a state within a state. They have sought to destabilize Lebanon demanding a veto power in Lebanon’s cabinet.
Its members and allies in parliament have blocked the selection of a new Lebanese president since the Syrian-backed Emile Lahoud finally stepped down last November. The Lebanese parliament is set to make a 19th attempt to elect a new president on May 13.
The origins of Hezbollah date back to June 1982, when Syria decided to permit the Islamofascist government in Iran to dispatch about 1,000 members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards to the Syrian-occupied Bekaa Valley in eastern Lebanon. Iran had a toehold, one that quickly grew like cancer in the Lebanese body politic.
Hezbollah is the group that before 9/11 was responsible for killing more Americans than any other group, including 243 American soldiers in their Beirut barracks in 1983. It is the stalking horse of Iran’s loony leader, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi recently made a pilgrimage to Damascus, as have other key Democrats. They are carrying out the plan of their party’s presumptive nominee, Barack Obama, who agrees that the problems in Iraq are all our fault and we just stirred things up. All we have to do is get out and talk. Let them look to Lebanon.
Tehran and Damascus want an end to Lebanese democracy, replaced with an Islamofascist puppet state with which to keep the Middle East cauldron boiling. It would compensate for their failure to prevent democracy from taking root in Iraq and Afghanistan. And they are willing to fight to the last Lebanese.
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Id like to see the US hand out a beat down on huzbulla in lebanon, pay back for the marine bombings.
May 10th, 2008 at 5:46 pm
deathstar,
May 10th, 2008 at 6:25 pmSome day, some day soon, we will meet out the justice that is owed to those terrorists in Lebanon.
What are we waiting for . Bomb that pussy Nasrallah.
May 10th, 2008 at 7:14 pmI would love for us to get revenge against those satanic bastards. Nasrallah should have surveillance on him and when the appropriate intelligence pops up we should drop a laser guided 2000 pounder on his fat piglet ass. he should be treated no differently than Osama Bin Laden or more appropriately, Al Zarqawi.
May 10th, 2008 at 9:17 pmTehran and Damascus want an end to Lebanese democracy, replaced with an Islamofascist puppet state with which to keep the Middle East cauldron boiling. It would compensate for their failure to prevent democracy from taking root in Iraq and Afghanistan. And they are willing to fight to the last Lebanese.
This journalist seems to ignore that there isn’t democraty in Lebanon, that the Signoria’s government is also a puppet’s power that is artificially held above water with our financial and military assistance
we should get out of Lebananon, I think that we are making things worst there, HBZ would never have got such a dimension if, we, as foreigners, weren’t occupying the place (I recall that HBZ was born in the early eighties to get rid of israeli occupation in south Lebanon) ; we ought to leave them to regulate their population inequality representation themselves.
May 11th, 2008 at 1:27 am