Wednesday, August 13, 2014

Carnegie Endowment has a new Lebanon expert: please meet him

1) Look at this gem: "But the army possesses neither the equipment nor the personnel to execute this role. This is in large part because the current political status quo in Lebanon, in which Hezbollah holds the upper hand over state institutions, has kept the Lebanese Armed Forces in a subordinate position."  So it is not the US, and by extension, Israel which is prohibiting the Lebanese Army from acquiring advanced and effective weapons?? It is Hizbullah which prevents the Lebanese Army from acquiring, for example, fighter jets and helicopter gun ships? When did Hizbullah stand in the face of arming the Lebanese Army? Basically Carnegie Endowment and other such think tanks in DC, when they open satellite offices in other countries, they look for people who can simply reproduce the conventional wisdom of people in DC.  The closed-mindedness and the groupthink of DC is suffocating, or it should be.
2) "One Lebanese actor in particular has remained directly involved in the conflict in Syria. The Lebanese paramilitary group Hezbollah has been actively supporting the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad".  You know where this guy is going when he starts his piece with this line not mentioning a word about the involvement of the Hariri paramalitary group with its Salafite allies and the SHIP OF ARMS that was arranged for Syrian rebels through a Hariri intelligence arm of the government.