| Opinion piece by the BBC mistakenly labeled as 'news' ... |
| You know, I get really tired of reading that "humiliating defeat" stuff. We were in Leb at the time under UN auspices, something we should be bringing up every time somebody suggests we try it again. We and the Frenchies were the bulk of the Multinational Force positioned between the Israelis, who'd just chased the PLO out of the country, and the Leb militias. As our guys were being blown up, it turned out that there was no "mandate" to hunt down and kill the bastards who'd killed them. We were "peacekeepers," not there for military operations. Reagan quite sensibly said to hell with it and pulled our guys out. The "humiliating defeat" was the UN's, since the rules were jiggered sufficiently to make sure the "Multinational Force" was an ineffectual group of targets in uniform, not a fighting force. Subsequent "Multinational Forces" in which the U.S. has participated have been put together and led by the U.S. Nor were we Israeli puppets: one of my friends related a story -- backed up by a couple of his NCOs who'd been there -- about having to pull a rod on an Israeli officer to get his point across at a bridge. That was before the kaboom. |
| Did he open his mouth? |
After talks with President Michel Suleiman - who is regarded as neutral in the sharply-polarised Lebanese arena - Mr Biden insisted he had not come to back any Lebanese party or person, but rather to support the country's independence and sovereignty. But at the same time, he urged "those who think about standing with the spoilers of peace not to miss this opportunity to walk away from the spoilers" - a remark clearly aimed at Hezbollah and its allies.| Who in turn snickered at the buffoon ... |
| It's their country. They can vote for whom they please. It's our money. We can spend it on whom we please -- and we've got enough financial problems right now. |
He then went off to see the Speaker of the Lebanese parliament, Nabih Berri, who is an ally of Hezbollah, and the Prime Minister, Fuad Siniora, who belongs to the Western-backed coalition.
If that implied balance, the impression was swiftly undermined by a later, unpublicised meeting behind closed doors in a private home with leaders of the pro-Western coalition who hold no official posts.
But Mr Biden insisted that Washington's commitment was to Lebanon, its sovereignty and independence. To back that up, he appeared with the Defence Minister, Elias al-Murr, at a display of some of the military hardware the US has supplied to the Lebanese Army in recent years.
Mr al-Murr said that, in a visit to Washington last month, he had been given a written commitment by Defence Secretary Robert Gates to provide the Lebanese Army with hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of arms and training over a five-year period, including helicopters and drones. Although that commitment might be reviewed in the light of the election results, Washington seems confident that the Lebanese Army can hold together and be built on as a neutral national institution despite the strain of coexistence with Hezbollah, whose military strength is greater.
Despite Mr Biden's protestations of neutrality, Hezbollah itself lost no time in dubbing his visit "a clear and detailed interference in Lebanese affairs" which raised "strong doubts about its real motivations."
As Mr Biden was showing off US military hardware in Beirut, Hezbollah was staging its own show of strength in Nabatieh, a provincial centre south-east of the capital. Thousands of supporters gathered to watch a relayed speech from their leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, to mark the anniversary of Israel's ignominious withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000 under the pressure of Hezbollah attacks.
But US leaders may already have concluded that a narrow win by the Hezbollah-led coalition would not be the end of the world.
Hezbollah itself is only putting forward 11 candidates in the contest for 128 parliamentary seats. The other elements in the opposition coalition come from allies such as the mainstream Shia Amal movement, headed by parliamentary Speaker Nabih Berri, and the Free Patriotic Movement of the Christian leader Michel Aoun, once a fierce opponent of Syria but now reconciled with Damascus and likely to do well in many Christian areas.
So, while generally unwelcome to the West, a narrow victory by the opposition would produce a picture very different from, for example, the Hamas takeover in Gaza, which was violent and absolute. The lines could be further blurred if Washington's diplomatic overtures to the Lebanese opposition's backers, Iran and Syria, were to produce results.
The Americans' closest ally, Britain, is already allowing its diplomats to hold official contacts with Hezbollah's "political wing", although the movement is still shunned by Washington as a "terrorist" group.