Nasrallah

Nasrallah and AounTell me if this paragraph doesn't strike you as a touch sympathetic toward Hezbollah:

This class battle transcends sectarian boundaries. Hezbollah has formed an alliance with the Free Patriotic Movement, led by Maronite Christian politician and former army commander Michel Aoun. With this coalition Hezbollah is trying to prove that it's not a purely sectarian party, it's not seeking to impose an Islamic government and it's willing to ally not just with nationalist Sunnis but also with Christians. Because Aoun stresses honest government, accountability and economic equality, he and Hezbollah seemed like a natural fit. By playing up its alliance with Aoun--and downplaying its partnership with the notoriously corrupt Shiite Amal party--Hezbollah can reinforce the reputation for honesty shared by many Islamist movements in the Middle East.

For one thing, I wouldn't know from reading this that Aoun -- unaffectionately nicknamed "the General" by a large sector of the Lebanese population -- was exiled in Paris up until the Cedar Revolution for his opposition to Syrian irrendentism. What finally brought him back home was his eagerness to renege on that opposition by making common cause with Syria's proxy militia, whose kidnapping of Israeli soldiers or rocketing of Israeli civilian apartment complexes (inhabited by Jews and by Arabs) go unmentioned in this Nation dispatch.

Mohammed Bazzi, who titles this piece "A People's Revolt" (just in case you didn't gel to his own leanings from the text), seems to think the present alliance with Nasrallah is governed by hard materialism and Shi'ite poverty. Never mind that Aoun has made triangulation and cynical deal-making an art form. Never mind that his party cares little for the shanty-dwelling Shia. What's important here is that Aoun's a secular liberal and therefore his unlikely backing of Hezbollah must represent a united front for reform. (Where have we heard "secular" used to dismiss suspect motives in the region before?)

Easy enough to account for why Hezbollah's suddenly at the cool kids' table at counterintuitive Lebanese caucauses. Israel's disastrous handling of the August war, and the milita's Chavez-like willingness to buy populism with alms has made it the inevitable winner of any successful coup against the Siniora regime. Aoun wants in from the storming of the palace steps, even if the car that gets him there is marked "Made in Damascus."

How many readers of this magazine would find themselves in agreement with Bill Kristol even outside the charitable space of the holiday season?

This is the editor of the Weekly Standard arguing, with his regime change doubles-partner Robert Kagan, against the Baker-Hamilton Commission's recommendations for Iraq:

It's not as if the Baker commission has accomplished nothing, however. Although its recommendations will have no effect on American policy going forward, they have already had a very damaging effect throughout the world, and especially in the Middle East and in Iraq. For the Iraq Study Group, aided by supportive American media, has successfully conveyed the impression to everyone at home and abroad that the United States is about to withdraw from Iraq. This has weakened American allies and strengthened American enemies. It has exacerbated the problems in Iraq, as all the various factions in that country begin to prepare for the "inevitable" American retreat. Now it will require enormous efforts by the president and his advisers to dispel the disastrous impression that the Baker commission has quite deliberately created and will continue to foster in the weeks ahead. At home and abroad, people have been led to believe that Jim Baker and not the president was going to call the shots in Iraq from now on.

That paragraph precedes one in which Kristol and Kagan pretty contentedly show that whatever the findings of this headline-generating body of "wise men," the president has given every indication that he will not a) play nice with Iran, b) do likewise with Syria. Big mistake, neocon dreaming, the Death of Diplomacy and all that, you say -- but here is Ha'aretz contributer Shmuel Rosner in Slate, discussing the one country, historically more amenable to democracy than Iraq, that K&K failed to mention:

Some Lebanese are waiting, somewhat anxiously, for the Baker-Hamilton committee's recommendations this Wednesday. They have zero confidence in the help they might get in the future from an American administration. "If the Syrians help Bush in Iraq, he could sell us out in a second," one of them told me. "Exactly as his father sold out the Kurds to Saddam 15 years ago."

Quite. What price, then, realpolitik, or the coddling of the only remaining Baathist government in the Middle East? (If a rapproachment with Syria is in fact in the works, then this would be not just a replay of the shameful sell-out of the Kurds and Shia in '91, but also reminiscent of the Churchill-Roosevelt concession to Stalin of Poland, whose violated sovereignty formed the basis for Allied intervention in the first place.)

Some principles are worth keeping and reaffirming, even at the cost of "stability." And what are the odds that a Hezbollah-controlled country south of Israel will be anything even remotely resembling stable?

We completely support Syria's war of terror: Pro-Hezbollah ralliersOthers chanted “Ahmed Fatfat is a Jew,” referring to the minister of sports and youth, who had been acting interior minister.

Long live people power and all that. So Sheik Hassan Nasrallah convinces his followers and the quisling pro-Syrian factionalists who've made common cause with him -- like Gen. Michel Aoun, a former exiled reformist and Christian leader of the Patriotic Free Movement -- to demonstrate peacefully today and wave only the cedar flag of Lebanon, not Hezbollah's more evocative yellow and green ensign of a fist clutching a Kalashnikov. Still, chants like the one cited above were pretty par for the course even as the protesters made their central plaint "clean" government. The Lebanese blogsophere was having none of this bullshit, however -- an encouraging sign if the internet is any kind of bellwether for popular opinion. Beirut's Daily Star newspaper shows how stupid and sinister these protesters really are:

Other popular slogans included: "100 percent! 100 percent! 100 percent! We are the majority!" and "We withstood and fought for our country, and won't let anyone shut us up!"

More like 25%, but who's counting?

I will say this: It was very clever indeed of Nasrallah to offer such a funhouse mirror image of the March 14 opposition rally of last year, which put a (possibly temporary) end to Syrian occupation. Hezbollah is, after all, angling for political dominance and realignment with Damascus. Today's massive outpouring of support for such an outcome makes the summer's devastating war with Israel seem even more calculated and deliberate.

Druze leader Walid Jumblatt is quite right to call the day's events tantamount to an attempted coup.

Jumblatt called on Hizbullah and Amal ministers who resigned in November to return to the Cabinet in order to "confirm their support for the international tribunal, for Resolution 1701 and for the Paris III donor conference."

The fact that they won't only underscores Hezbollah's real intent, to stoke and profit from domestic indignation at a time when international justice is near at hand.

If things disintegrate even further, and Syria is "invited" back into Lebanon in the event of a Hezbollah takeover, then the U.S. should consider a rapid withdrawal of forces from Iraq -- and redeploy them to Beirut, where it's not too late to save a gasping democracy.