LEBANON MORE HOPEFUL THAN IRAQ?

Michael J. Totten has an article in the Wall Street Journal putting a good case forward on how Lebanon is a functioning democracy.

I recommend it as a good primer on the labyrinth of Levantine politics---Lebanese style. Totten leaves out the clans and a lot of the sectarian kaleidoscope that makes Lebanon a sort of tidal pool into which all sorts of ?migr?s from the surrounding bad neighborhoods fetch up and find lives better than the ones they left.

I’m thinking of the Armenian gentleman who did work for me while I lived in Beirut. Or the Assyrian landlord whose summer home I rented in Suq Al-Gharb. Or the Greek Orthodox or Greek Melkites living nearby. And the Druze just down the road. All these tiny minorities add to the patchwork quilt of Lebanon, living in the shadow of the big three: Maronite Christians, Sunni and Shi’ite Muslims, who control the main organs of government.

Lebanon is an example of a collection of entrepreneurial and professionally adepts who do so well overseas that Mexico's Carlos Slim is the third richest man in the world and US ex-Lebanese, some via other countries, number Selma Hayek, Paula Abdul, Ralph Nader, Dr. DeBakey, Danny/Marlo Thomas, Sen George Mitchell [now chairman of Disney] and Vince Vaughn are just a few of the success stories out of this Land of Milk and Hummus.

A few years ago, I had a chance to travel from Israel to Jordan to Syria and then to Lebanon; all aided by the Amoco connection, and got a first-hand lesson on the economic differences between a democracy [Israel], a benevolent monarchy [Jordan], a repressive autocracy [Syria] and a thriving Entrepot of cultural clashes, a veritable mezze of multiculturalism, that is Lebanon.

That was before much-admired and beloved Rafik Hariri was murdered by Syrian intelligence operatives, with the full cooperation of Lebanon’s Quisling President Ernile Lahoud, walking evidence of the total funhouse mirror politics of the larger Levant around Lebanon‘s borders..