[Dean's World] Michael J. Totten: On the Top Floor of Lebanon's Civil Society

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Posted by Michael J. Totten:
On the Top Floor of Lebanon's Civil Society
http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1170873801.shtml


   BEIRUT -- On March 14, 2005, Lebanon captivated the world when
   one-third of the country demonstrated in downtown Beirut and demanded
   free elections and the withdrawal of the occupying Syrian military
   dictatorship.

   [March_14_2005_Beirut.jpg]

   A nakedly imperialist Baath government was defeated by its foreign
   subjects, and it was defeated live on TV. Lebanon had pushed itself
   far out of the Middle East mainstream and liberated itself from what
   Ghassan Tueni calls "the great Arab prison." Later that year Ghassan
   would see his son Gebran, An Nahar newspaper editor and a member of
   Lebanon's parliament, murdered on a hillside road above the city by a
   Syrian car bomb. Beirut's spring was a short one, and may yet go the
   way of a similar uprising that exploded in Prague in the late 1960s
   before it was smashed under the treads of Soviet tanks.

   The Assad regime in Damascus brooded over its loss of face, property,
   and cash flow in Lebanon, and responded with a vicious campaign of
   terrorism and murder in the streets of Beirut. The city started to
   look once more like its old frightening self when it epitomized urban
   disaster areas. Hezbollah's unilateral instigation of war with the
   Israelis and their ongoing now-violent push to topple the government
   make Lebanon look more like Iraq than it looks like Prague.

   I've contributed to this image myself with my own writing and
   photographs, though I try not to do so. The unspoken media rule "if it
   bleeds, it leads" applies to blogs and independent journalists as much
   as it does to mainstream media reporters. Warmongers, terrorists, and
   jihadi fanatics are more interesting to read about than quiet
   shopkeepers who never hurt anyone and wished they lived in a normal
   country. I am well aware that my recent work portrays a skewed image
   of Lebanon, but it's hard to avoid in the media business.

   So I met up with Eli Khoury, one of my old acquaintances from the
   Beirut Spring, who I met immediately after March 14 two years ago
   while the Syrians were still rulers of Lebanon. Eli was one of the
   elite of the movement back then. He still is today even while he and
   his kind get almost no press. They are, for the most part, staying
   home, hugging their flags, and waiting for the darkening Hezbollah
   storm to blow over or explode in conflagration.

   [1]read the rest at michaeltotten.com

References

   1. http://www.michaeltotten.com/archives/001380.html