Daily Archives: February 4, 2008

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Open Thread: Which American President Would Be Best For Lebanon?

As Super Tuesday approaches, Lebanese Americans should think hard about the President that would be best for America and best for Lebanon. My two cents.

I’m a sucker for Barack Obama. I enjoyed watching every speech he made, twice. Yesterday, I started a nasty habit of mass emailing the “Yes We Can” Youtube video to everyone I think might care (my wife is already sick of listening to it). This guy makes me proud to be American. No wait, I’m not an American. In fact I wonder: if I were a Lebanese-American voting tomorrow, would I vote for him?

I started imagining him sitting with Bashar Assad or Walid Mouallem and “listening” to their trademark BS. He would probably be impressed by their “willingness to cooperate”. He might even give them the benefit of the doubt. Alas, like French President Sarkozy and many Europeans before him, it will take him at least a year to fathom the extent of their deception. That’s a learning curve that neither we, nor the U.S. has luxury for. Too bad.

What we need is someone who knows the ways of the Syrian and Iranian regimes. Someone that has been around for a while. That leaves us with Hillary Clinton and John McCain (Romney and Huckabee wont make it to the end, because even if one of them managed to win the Republican primary, he’ll be eaten alive by the Democrats). Hillary has Bill, and Bill knows a lot about the Assads. Unfortunately, the Clintons are too ready to cut deals with the devil if enough trouble was stirred in foreign lands.

What we need is someone a bit more principled. Someone who would look a dictator in the eye and tell him: I ain’t shaking your filthy blood-soaked hands. Someone like John Mccain who’s been around the block for so long he’d be impossible to fool.

If I were an American, I would be voting for John McCain tomorrow and in November.

Do You agree? Disagree? Who would you vote for? Why? Please let me know what you think because I know many Lebanese Americans out there could use a nudge.

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Should The Soldiers Found Guilty Be Executed?

Hezbollah jumps at an opportunity to make Lebanon more like Iran.


Should they be scapegoated?

For the sake of argument — and I’m in no position to speculate on the outcome of the investigation — let’s assume that the probe into Sunday’s events reveals that in the heat of the confrontation, a group of Lebanese soldiers and officers freaked out at the mob’s attempts to usurp their weapons by force and intimidate them by hurling stones and shouting insults at them. Let’s say that those soldiers and officers responded disproportionately and shot at the mobs killing a few of them.

Of course, if that is the case, any reasonable person would agree that the guilty men in uniform should be severely punished, disgraced and maybe even jailed for many years. On a larger scale, an overhaul of the army should equip it with rubber bullets and other non-fatal riot control equipment. But should the soldiers be executed as one Hezbollah official was demanding?

Shouldn’t we take into consideration self defense and the extraordinary war-like situation where a soldier’s ability for measured response is severely compromised? Do we really want to become an execution nation like Iran, where teenage girls are publicly executed for “crimes against chastity” ?

Today, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei’s representative to the Supreme National Security Council, Ali Larijani, said that “Hezbollah’s victory in the July War is the fruit of the Iranian Revolution”. Let’s just hope no other fruit of that sort trickles down to our justice system.