Passing The Baton

Dear Jeffrey, please keep it quiet…for now.

Just in case you didn’t notice, the first day of August was different this year from August 1st of last year. Do you remember all the pomp and fanfare that surrounded “The Anniversary of the Lebanese and Syrian armies”? Or, as transliterated from Arabic: 3eid al jaishain al lubnani wal soury?
The humiliating and highly scrutinized Syrian withdrawal made it impossible for our “sisters” to lump their army’s anniversary onto ours this year. So we had a quiet anniversary, and our sovereign Army is finally left alone. Is it?

Yesterday, the American Ambassador, Mr. Jeffrey Feltman made a rare showing in a Lebanese Army event. Lebanese Army divers had completed the first phase of an American training on underwater ordnance removal and disposal. This is not the first time the Lebanese army does an American training, but what is different this time is that the American ambassador showed up, made a speech and cracked a few jokes.

On the face of it, this is perfectly normal. Any country that gives training to foreign troops will have representatives in their graduation. But, like we all know, these are no ordinary times in Lebanon. We have a serious war of ideas going on between two camps, and any contribution, no matter how little, to our opponents’ arguments is not in the best interest of our country.

One of the ideas being propagated is this: Lebanon has moved from Syrian dominance to American (and by extension, Israeli) dominance. The sight of Mr. Feltman surrounded by smiling Lebanese soldiers who are bonding with their American counterparts can only add to that perception. It will make the March 14 alliance’s efforts to capture the hearts and minds of the remaining die-hard anti-American Lebanese a bit harder.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that the training event shouldn’t be acknowledged. The Lebanese army’s website did cover the event but it has very cleverly underplayed the Feltman dimension.

So Mr. Feltman, we love your jokes, but for now, please keep them for yourself.

update: I just read Assafir. It seems Walid Jumblat and Talal Salman are making the same point (albeit with a populist Arabist twist)