Very interesting editorial in the Lebanese Daily Star making the point that Hizbollah is more on the side of Lebanese nationalism than Syrian soldiarity.But this was the most interesting point:

We hope we won’t be led into another situation like 1990, when America’s strategic interests outweighed Lebanese democratic aspirations, and Syria was given carte blanche in Lebanon in exchange for its support of the U.S.-led Gulf war. Lebanon must not fall prey to any outside agendas; the Lebanese must be free to democratically govern themselves, without any foreign interference.

Recall how John Kerry and many, many, many other Democrats criticized George W. Bush for not building a “grand coalition” the way his father had? Well, what was always left out of these criticisms is that grand coalitions need to be built with something. Was it really so grand to have Syria in our coalition if it came at the price of acceding to Syria’s control of Lebanon for a decade? Was our coalition more legitimate — as Kerry and Howard Dean claim — because it had so many members or was it less legitimate because in order to gain allies like the Syrians we had to betray our principles.

Again: the key foreign policy principle of the Democratic Party — and the pro-Europe “multilateralists” — coming out of the Iraq war is this notion that it is better to do wrong in a group than to do right alone.

Just something to ponder.