Ending the Occupation

The heat is on the mid-East's most cruel and unjust occupation: Syria's 30 year-old armed take-over of Lebanon. A week since the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, widely assumed a Syrian plot, Lebanon is inflamed:

Tens of thousands of opposition supporters shouted insults at Syria and demanded the resignation of their pro-Syrian government in a central Beirut demonstration Monday, marking a week since the assassination of Rafik Hariri, Lebanon's most prominent politician.

The AP says:

Beating drums and waving Lebanese flags, those of their own parties and portraits of past leaders killed during the 1975-90 civil war, the protesters gathered at the site where Hariri was killed Feb. 14 in a bombing that the opposition blames on Damascus.

Some in the crowd yelled "Syria out!" and "We don't want a parliament that acts as a doorkeeper for the Syrians," competing with loud insults shouted against Syrian President Bashar Assad.

According to Rami G. Khouri, the pro-Western editor-at-large of Beirut's Daily Star:

The accusing finger pointed at powerful neighbor Syria is the result of a long history of involvement in Lebanon - the most recent of which was its crude pressure to extend the rule of its ally, Lebanese President Emile Lahoud. Syrian troops had entered Lebanon in 1976 to prevent the country from totally disintegrating during the civil war, and have remained ever since with Arab League and Lebanese government approval. Syria played a strong role in preserving the country's unity and stability after the 15-year-long civil war ended in 1990. Though most Lebanese appreciate this assistance, many would now prefer that the Syrians leave the country for the Lebanese to govern.

Pent-up anger against Syria has been building up among many Lebanese for years. The growing opposition maintained that Syria's behind-the-scenes dominance of Lebanese domestic politics created a stalemate situation, in which the public sector was increasingly defined by mediocrity, corruption, and lassitude. Profits made by Syrian elite out of their privileged position in Lebanon do not endear them either to the Lebanese. A faster Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon is widely seen as the key to Lebanon's next surge forward in its national development drive.

Chrenkoff has a Syria news round-up:

The crisis currently unfolding in Lebanon offers a rare spectacle of the United States and France sitting politically on the same side of the fence. France, of course, maintains a keen interest in Lebanon as its former colony. In fact, some French analysts think that their country's involvement provides the international dimension to the assassination:

"'I have not the shadow of a doubt that Syria is responsible,' said Antoine Basbous, president of the Observatory of Arab Countries. 'It was a message to the Lebanese opposition -- but also to France: this is our colony, we are masters here and we intend to stay. So keep out'..."

'I am convinced this attack -- the most significant since the end of Lebanon's war -- was a message directed at Chirac, who was a personal friend of Rafiq Hariri,' said Antoine Sfeir, director of the Cahiers de l'Orient newsletter. 'The evidence suggests that the murder is a response to UN security council resolution 1559 [calling on Syria to withdraw its troops from Lebanon] voted in September at the initiative of France and the US. It was Jacques Chirac who was the real architect of the resolution'."

It's long past time for global and united efforts to end this illegal occupation, which benefits only rich Syrians and terrorists (Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad back Syria in exchange for terrorist bases and training camps in Southern Lebanon).

So what's the larger lesson? Mark Steyn says it's 'forget Europe':

On Thursday, in a discussion of "the greater Middle East", the President remarked that Syria was "out of step". And, amazingly, he's right. Not so long ago, Syria was perfectly in step with the Middle East – it was the archetypal squalid stable Arab dictatorship. Two years on, Syria hasn't changed, but Iraq has, and, to varying degrees, the momentum in Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the Palestinian Authority and Lebanon (where the Syrians have overplayed their hand) is also in the Bush direction. . . .

The EU isn't the Arab League, though for much of the past three years it's been hard to tell the difference. But it, too, is out of step. The question is whether the Europeans are smart enough, like the savvier Sunnis in Iraq, to realise it. The Washington Post's Fred Hiatt compared the President's inaugural speech with Gerhard Schröder's keynote address to the Munich Conference on Security Policy last week and observed that, while both men talked about the Middle East, terrorism and 21st-century security threats, Mr Bush used the word "freedom" 27 times while Herr Schröder uttered it not once; he preferred to emphasise, as if it were still March 2003 and he were Arab League Secretary-General, "stability" – the old realpolitik fetish the Administration has explicitly disavowed. It's not just that the two sides aren't speaking the same language, but that the key phrases of Mr Bush's vocabulary don't seem to exist in Chirac's or Schröder's.

Apparently, the Lebanese people got the message, and are adopting the Bush Doctrine--one protester at a time.

(via LGF and Instapundit)

More:

That was quick. According to The Times (London):

Syria says it is willing to withdraw its troops from neighbouring Lebanon, after fifteen years of effective military occupation.

Amr Mussa, the head of the Arab League, said that Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian President, had assured him this morning that Syria was prepared to fulfil its obligations in the Taef accords that ended Lebanon's civil war in 1995.

Syria's change in stance, after ignoring years of international diplomatic pressure, comes as the Lebanese people themselves turn on their Syrian occupiers, blaming them for the assassination last week of their former prime minister, Rafik Hariri.

Anyone doubt "Baby Assad's" change of heart was accelerated by the object lesson Bush and Blair provided in Iraq?

(via The Templar Pundit)