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Iraq 2003, Lebanon 1982
By Charles Glass
June 18, 2003: (ZMag)
People cheered when the United States Marines marched into the capital.
At last, someone would restore order, remove the thugs and murderers
from the streets and force an end to the chaos. Then a new government
arrested and tortured dissidents. The U.S. ordered the dissident's
outside backers, Syria and Iran, to stay away. Britain joined the U.S.
in policing the streets. With Washington supporting the government and
training its army, the opposition strategy meant removing the Americans
and the British.
Syria and Iran helped the rebels. American soldiers shot and killed
Shiite Muslims. American and British planes bombed their neighborhoods.
Soon, the American embassy and the Marine headquarters were rubble.
American and British civilians were taken hostage and displayed on
television. Then, the American warships sailed away and took the Marines
with them. The experiment in nation-building was over.
This has already happened. The time: August 1982 to February 1985. The
place: Lebanon. Can it happen again, on a larger scale, in Iraq?
The forces that drove the conflict in Lebanon are duplicated in Iraq.
About forty per cent of Lebanon's three million people were Shiite
Muslims, the poorest and most desperate people in the country. Of Iraq's
sixty twenty-three million people, sixty per cent are Shiite. Most of
them, after Saddam Hussein's discrimination against them and twelve
years of sanctions, are also impoverished and angry. Shiite Muslims of
both countries look to their clergy for leadership in troubled times.
There are strong family links between the Shiah of Iran and of Lebanon.
Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Lebanon's Hizballah, was born in the
Iraqi holy city of Najaf. The mother of Mohammed Bakr al-Hakim, who
heads the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, is from a
prominent south Lebanese family. Mullahs from both countries receive
spiritual guidance, financial aid and military support in Iran. In
Lebanon, the United States antagonized Iran and Syria. In Iraq, the U.S.
appears to be doing the same, with American officials suggesting that
both Iran and Syria are ripe for American-sponsored changes of regime.
In Lebanon, the Lebanese -- as well as the Americans, French, British
and Italians of the Multi-National Force - paid for U.S. foreign policy
errors in blood.
Iran is, if anything, closer to the Shiites of Iraq than they were to
those in Lebanon. Iran has a long border with Iraq, all the way from the
Gulf up to Kurdistan. Iran's leadership knows the country intimately.
Iraqi exiles, some of whom worked with the CIA for years, said they were
impressed on a recent visit to Tehran that the Iranians' knowledge of
Iraqi society and culture was far superior to the Americans'. The U.S.,
they said, had a few agents in Iraq. The Iranians, on the other hand,
had allies among both the Kurds and the Shiites.
To understand how America became involved in Lebanon, recall the summer
of 1982. The Israeli army was bombing and besieging Beirut. Philip Habib,
the diplomat sent by President Ronald Reagan to negotiate between the
Palestine Liberation Organization and Israel, believed that the only
means to save Beirut from total destruction was to arrange the
evacuation of PLO fighters. Israel demanded that the U.S. oversee the
evacuation. Thus, Marines came to Beirut to guide the Palestinian
fighters onto ships and to protect the unarmed Palestinian civilians
left behind in the refugee camps. The PLO withdrew. A short time later,
the Marines left under a banner that proclaimed, "Mission
Accomplished."
In September, after the assassination of the Lebanese president-elect
whom General Ariel Sharon had imposed by force in an earlier instance of
regime change, Israel violated its undertakings to Habib and invaded
defenseless west Beirut. Its army delivered Christian militiamen under a
thug named Elie Hobeika (assassinated in 2001, one week before he was
due to give testimony against Ariel Sharon in a Belgian court) to the
gates of the Palestinian Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. The ensuing
massacre, condemned by an Israeli commission of inquiry, forced the U.S.
to return the Marines to Beirut. Britain, France and Italy joined them.
There, they all became pawns of U.S. policy and hostage to anyone who
wanted to attack the United States.
Hizballah did not exist, when Israel invaded Lebanon. Within a year, it
had become the most powerful guerrilla force in the Middle East. It
became the first Arab armed force to drive the Israeli army out of
occupied territory. Israel took almost twenty years and many casualties
to discover that the expense of occupying Lebanon was too high to pay
forever. Hizballah's expulsion of the Marines and the Israelis from
Lebanon relied on Iranian and Syrian help.
In 1990, the first Bush administration put the final touches on Syria's
domination of Lebanon, when it agreed -- in exchange for Syrian
participation in the war over Kuwait -- not to oppose Syria's entry into
Christian east Beirut and its take-over of Lebanon's governing
institutions. Lebanon has been effectively a Syria colony ever since.
The younger Bush, however, could not persuade Syria to support a new
American coalition against Iraq. Colin Powell came to Damascus at the
end of the Iraq invasion to read the riot act to Syria's young
president, Bashar al-Assad: close down the Palestinian offices in
Damascus, stop Hizballah attacks on the Israelis from south Lebanon, cut
all military links between Iran and Hizballah, make sure no money goes
from Syria to Hamas in Gaza, move the Lebanese army into south Lebanon
and accept the fact that American troops are four hundred miles from
Damascus.
Syria's economy is already faltering with the loss of its massive trade
with Iraq since the war: from now on, American rather than Syria
products will be sold in Baghdad. Syria has also lost its discounted oil
from Iraq. With a weak economy, a weaker army and both Americans and
Israelis pointing their heavy weapons at him, Assad is said to be
complying. Compliance may be the only way to ensure his survival. But
compliance may not be enough.
Among the more outspoken, and thus more frank, proponents of regime
change in both Iran and Syria are Michael Ledeen of the American
Enterprise Institute and Richard Perle, recently discredited associate
of the Defense Policy Board. Perle has said again and again that Syria
should be next on the American hit list. Ledeen calls Iran "the
creator of modern Islamic terrorism." In The Australian newspaper,
Ledeen writes, "We are in a regional struggle, and we are compelled
to deal with it. Now what? The short answer is: regime change." But
is it only democracy that the U.S. seeks to impose? If so, what about
the unelected governments of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and a hundred
other countries around the world? The characteristic that distinguishes
Syria and Iran from the rest is their effective opposition to the
Israeli occupation of Lebanon in the early 1980s and their half-hearted
supported of Palestinians under occupation now. They are also supporting
Iraqis who do not want America to become a long-term occupying power in
the country. Just as Israel urged Washington to undertake regime change
in Iraq, it is the loudest cheerleader for repeating the operation in
Syria and Iran. In the end, the cost of this policy will be borne by the
American military and the people of Iraq, Syria and Iran.
© Charles Glass 2003
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