Suleiman Elected Lebanese President As Hezbollah Takes Over

As I predicted, Hezbollah ally and former Lebanese army chief Michel Suleiman was sworn in today as Lebanon's president.

In his acceptance speech, Suleiman made a point of praising Hezbollah's war against Israel and announced that he would seek increased ties with Syria, which was certainly no great surprise. The Syrians have not had formal relations with Lebanon since they were forced out by the March 14th movement after years of occupying the country as a virtual colony.

The UN also okayed the arrangement, thus trashing three separate UN resolutions calling for Hezbollah to be disarmed and making the organization even more of an obscene joke, if that's possible.

US ally Fouad Siniora is on his way out as prime minister, probably to exile and, rumor has it, a well-paid sinecure at the World Bank.That little tidbit of information is yet another clue that leads me to believe that the Bush Administration acceded to the takeover of Lebanon as part of negotiations designed to try and woo Syria away from its alliance with Iran.

I sense the hand of Condaleeza Rice in the matter.

As you also know, I'm reasonably sure that those negotiations are the actual subject of the meetings between Syria and Israel, rather than some deal involving the Golan Heights that Israeli PM Olmert lacks the political backing in Israel to pull off anyway.

The Lebanese government was never much of a US ally, but it was, at least, a nascent Arab democracy and as such was a US client. Handing Lebanon over to Hezbollah and the Syria/Iran axis is a huge mistake that will come back to haunt us later. It sends a very clear message to both our friends and our enemies.