Blindingly Obvious?
Woke up this morning struck by the blindingly obvious. I'd wondered how in the world the Cedar Revolution had succeeded. After the Harrari murder there were a lot of people demonstrating in the street. So? People were already calling it a "revolution" while there was still nothing but crowds, and I smirked, I said: No despotic nation is going to pull out of a subject nation without a bloody fight... But they did pull out, Syria pulled out. I said: Well, everybody was against them, even the French. And the US is just to the east, and aching for an excuse to attack that the world would accept. If even the French are opposed to Syria, who's going to oppose the US in an attack on Syria in response to a Syrian inspired Lebanese civil war? So Syria pulled out, leaving, I presumed, a heavy intelligence apparatus so they would still have control.
How silly of me. What they left was Hizbullah, which was Syria, which with their vast arms would soon take over the government anyway, either directly by force or more discreetly by intimidation. Syria wasn't losing a subject nation, they were just giving it over to a proxy.
All of these things are matters of degree and emphasis, the basic forces are known, it's only a matter of how they balance out. The great eye-opener for me was discovering the extraordinary amount of arms Hizbollah had quietly amassed. I had assumed they didn't have much more than rifles and just a few rockets.
But this is then the argument: If Syria pulled out because they knew they were surrendering nothing in that their proxy would soon be the government, how is it going to be possible to separate Syria from Hizbollah if they're one and the same? The idea that Syria won't intervene if Israel seems to be succeeding in destroying Hizbollah becomes more dicey --though again it's all a matter of balance and degree.
And the big question is Iran. Iran is the big dog. Hizbollah is their creation --so it's asserted. I've just now said Hizbollah is Syria, which is why Syria found it easy to surrender to the meaningless Cedar Revolution. Is Syria in fact Iran? Do the two merely work in concert, or are they the same? Is Syria pleased to do Iran's bidding, or do they chafe?
...Let me see, what was it that was so blindingly obvious...? I guess only one thing, that Syria pulled out of Lebanon because they weren't actually surrendering anything in that Hizbollah was soon to be the government of Lebanon anyway. For me, this is a new insight. But the next insight lies in the new clarity of the next question: How autonomous is Syria in all of this? How separate are they from the commands of Iran? And, how free are they from the intimidation of Hizbullah? Hizbullah doesn't have tanks, but are they the ones with the personnel, the ruthlessness, the motivation, and perhaps the support of the heart of the palace?
If the interconnections are greater than I'd thought, and the equilibrium less stable, things could really blow-up before they reassemble as rubble.
How silly of me. What they left was Hizbullah, which was Syria, which with their vast arms would soon take over the government anyway, either directly by force or more discreetly by intimidation. Syria wasn't losing a subject nation, they were just giving it over to a proxy.
All of these things are matters of degree and emphasis, the basic forces are known, it's only a matter of how they balance out. The great eye-opener for me was discovering the extraordinary amount of arms Hizbollah had quietly amassed. I had assumed they didn't have much more than rifles and just a few rockets.
But this is then the argument: If Syria pulled out because they knew they were surrendering nothing in that their proxy would soon be the government, how is it going to be possible to separate Syria from Hizbollah if they're one and the same? The idea that Syria won't intervene if Israel seems to be succeeding in destroying Hizbollah becomes more dicey --though again it's all a matter of balance and degree.
And the big question is Iran. Iran is the big dog. Hizbollah is their creation --so it's asserted. I've just now said Hizbollah is Syria, which is why Syria found it easy to surrender to the meaningless Cedar Revolution. Is Syria in fact Iran? Do the two merely work in concert, or are they the same? Is Syria pleased to do Iran's bidding, or do they chafe?
...Let me see, what was it that was so blindingly obvious...? I guess only one thing, that Syria pulled out of Lebanon because they weren't actually surrendering anything in that Hizbollah was soon to be the government of Lebanon anyway. For me, this is a new insight. But the next insight lies in the new clarity of the next question: How autonomous is Syria in all of this? How separate are they from the commands of Iran? And, how free are they from the intimidation of Hizbullah? Hizbullah doesn't have tanks, but are they the ones with the personnel, the ruthlessness, the motivation, and perhaps the support of the heart of the palace?
If the interconnections are greater than I'd thought, and the equilibrium less stable, things could really blow-up before they reassemble as rubble.
posted by mouse at 1:11 PM
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