Comments on: MICHAEL YOUNG ON LEBANON - WITHOUT THE SPIN

By: melanie ahmar

melanie ahmar — Fri, 16 May 2008 12:03:09 +0000

BRILLIANT COMMENTARY. Your description of the Lebanese quilt is both heartwarming and spot on. Well done.
Please keep writing on Lebanon.

By: mmm

mmm — Fri, 16 May 2008 11:57:56 +0000

An excellent analysis, and Michael Young is as always as perceptive as he is articulate. Please continue posting items on Lebanon.

By: daveinboca

daveinboca — Fri, 16 May 2008 09:34:06 +0000

I have a Druze cousin who got a scholarship to Northwestern, these people are very smart, and I lived in Suz al-Gharb, just down the escarpment road from Aley, while I studied Arabic at FSI in the American Embassy back in the day. Suq al Gharb is a Greek Melkite village & my landlord was an Assyrian Christian who had an AK-47 for when the Muslims came. I heard he moved to Chicago when the fighting started in ‘75. Ralph Nader’s family hailed from near Suq Al-Gharb, as he was famous way back then. [BTW, Rick, the Chouf is SOUTHeast of Beirut, near Deir al-Qamar where Walid Jumblatt still lives, and Aley is directly west on the road to Damascus, but the gist of your piece is great.]

All this is to say that Michael Young is brilliant, but only hints at the truth that Nasrullah’s Hizbollah is a cancer in the Lebanese political system, a cancer that didn’t exist when I was there & the Sunni PLO dominated the Shia south. Sadly, the resident Shi’ites suffer from the external Iranian financed and Syrian manipulated terrorist organization that must be stopped at all costs or eventually the game is up for the US & Israel to do anything else except hunker down & toss missiles back at the Iranian proxies. While Hamas is on the left flank.

I wish Bush would be more straightforward with our Arab allies on Lebanon, as the Saudis and Gulfies are 100% behind any strong action we might take there.

I’d like to see McCain stand up for Siniora’s government in a public declaration on behalf of democracy, to smoke out Obama into making another silly compromising statement.

By: Allen L

Allen L — Thu, 15 May 2008 17:23:20 +0000

Thank you for the piece, I for one like the Lebanon posts. It’s not something I normally look into much, so I let you do the heavy lifting.

I had no idea that Hizbullah was vulnerable in this fashion.

By: Pro Cynic

Pro Cynic — Thu, 15 May 2008 15:00:39 +0000

Rick,

I don’t know what feedback you’re getting, but please continue with your coverage of Lebanon. It is an area that desperately needs attention at the moment, and you’re the only one trying to provide it. Our government certainly isn’t.

Thanks. The problem is I get zero links and my audience shrinks. I also get a few nasty comments and emails too.
I agree it is vital as well as being very confusing and hard to understand. I don’t pretend to know the full story - but what I know, I write about. I try to link to people and media who actually know what’s going on and are authoritative in their analysis. Much of my take is regurgitated so I make no real claim to original thinking.

Ed.