Lebanon's Suleiman Signs Defense Pact With Iran

One of the most conspicuous failures of George W. Bush and Condi Rice's 'Arab Democracy' fetish has to be Lebanon.

The anti-Syrian March 14th movement was initially sold out at Annapolis, and recent events have made it pretty obvious that a free hand in Lebanon (among other things) for Syria and Iran's proxy Hezbollah was part of a clandestine deal for relative quiet in Iraq.

Part of that deal involved our agreement to the ascension of ex-Lebanese army chief and Hezbollah protege' Michel Suleiman to the presidency and the granting of tens of millions of dollars (on top of hundreds of millions over several years) worth of US military aid to Suleiman's Lebanese army - even though Suleiman had the Lebanese army collaborating with Hezbollah during the Israel-Hezbollah war and refused to allow it to fight against Hezbollah even when Hezbollah was killing Lebanese civilians during a series of attacks against the March 14 Lebanese government in May of 2008. Suleiman and the Lebanese Army also did absolutely nothing to respect or implement UN resolution 1701, stop Hezbollah from receiving new weaponry from Iran and Syria or moving back into its old positions in South Lebanon.

The strangest thing of all was Condi Rice,who I presume gets paid to know these things not only agreed to Suleiman being named to the presidency but praised it, and the Bush Administration actually increased our military aid to Lebanon.

Then,on top of all that it came out..surprise...that not only was the Lebanese Army already strongly infiltrated by Hezbollah but that Suleiman actually considers Hezbollah a legitimate part of Lebanon's defense arm!

Any reasonably astute observer could have seen this coming a long way off.

Suleiman is back in the news again today. He was in Tehran, palling around with Ahmadinejad,as he signed a five year defense pact between Iran and Lebanon that includes military aid to the Lebanese army,including what Ahmadinejad characterized as 'defensive weapons.'

According to Naharnet: “‘We are grateful that the Islamic Republic of Iran has always stood by the Lebanese people and government,’ IRNA [the Iranian News Agency] quoted Suleiman as saying.”

And Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei was quoted as saying "Lebanese unity is the key to victory over Israel."

In other words, the rearmament of Hezbollah by Iran and Syria has lost even the pretense of illegality.

None of this was deemed worthy of major notice by the American news media of course. And the American taxpayer still continues to send what amounts to millions in military aid to Hezbollah.

What the Bush administration has accomplished in Lebanon is to set up another failed state that's a training ground and haven for Islamic terrorism, just like in Pakistan. But unlike Pakistan, this time we actually had a major role in setting it up and even paid part of the cost.

In the future we may find that the cost is a lot higher than we supposed.

Nicely done, Condi. Heckuva job, Bushie.