> Here's the story we're now encouraged to believe...
The official story is pretty ludicrous to anyone who knows anything about Lebanon. Far from some national uprising against Syrian occupation, it's basically a continuation of the civil war, with different ethnic communities lining up on different sides. Granted, long-time opportunists like Jumblatt (whose leftist Druze militias fought the Maronite Phalangists alongside Sunnis and Palestinians in the old days) are now alongside the Christians on the anti-Syrian side, but it's still the case that Lebanon is a country sorely divided on communal lines, and there's really nothing more to this story. The Beirut "opposition" is not fighting for abstract "democracy," but its constituent elements are fighting for their own particular communal interests.
It doesn't take a genius to figure this stuff out, but apparently if you're too dumb to understand this, you can still write about Lebanon for the US press.
- - - - - - - - - - John Lacny http://www.johnlacny.com
Tell no lies, claim no easy victories