The Bush Administration: Back to Old Tricks
Dr. Joseph Hitti
March 12, 2008
After September 11, 2001, we heard President Bush and his thinkers make a major reassessment of how the US conducts its foreign policy: We heard it said many times that the US will no longer seek stability by colluding with dictators and criminal governments at the expense of the true aspirations of the peoples of the Middle East and the world at large. We were promised that from that day forward only the long term interests of the peoples of the region - democracy, freedom, justice, free determination, and the pursuit of happiness - will guide US policy, and not short-term interests associated with supporting defective leaderships that are often imposed on people by force or by antiquated traditions.
Fast forward to March 2008, and witness Samir Geagea one the most criminal warlords of the Lebanese War who leads the Lebanese Forces - now a party, but between 1975 and 1990 one of the most murderous militias whose political program is to eradicate the Lebanese State institutions and replace them by a Christian-based government under the leadership of the Maronite Patriarch. In other words, a Christian counterpart to what Hezbollah stands for today on the Muslim side of the equation.
Witness this assassin of thousands of innocent Lebanese of all denominations, including his own Maronite community, be welcomed to the White House by Steven Hadley and John Hanna. Witness the Bush administration licking the boot of this murderous gangster only to promote him as the "Christian" leader of the Hariri-Siniora-Jumblatt Sunni-Druze Mafia that calls itself "The March 14 Cedars Revolution". Witness the Bush administration call Geagea a "major" figure in the March 14 coalition, since back when the US was sponsoring the Syrian occupation of Lebanon throughout the 1980s and 1990s, and Syria was a friend of the US and a "factor of stability" in Lebanon (which then became an occupying force after 2003), Geagea's militiamen stood side-by-side with the Syrian soldiers, shelled the Christian sectors of Lebanon, and helped the Syrian occupation impose a 2-year long siege of the Christian sector to force the Christians to kneel and sign the infamous Taif Agreement that took power from the Christian President and gave it to the Sunni Prime Minister.
Witness the Bush administration give an official welcome to a murderous warlord who, notwithstanding his opposition to Hezbollah and to their fanatic Islamic platform, wants to impose a similarly fanatic and racist Christian platform of government for at least the Lebanese Christians, if not the entire country. This is the man whose Lebanese Forces militia's logo is a cross looking like a knife, with which they slaughtered untold numbers of Lebanese during those years when they controlled the streets and back alleys of the country. I was there during those years and I experienced first hand how they robbed people's houses (ours included: they were protecting us from the PLO and the Muslims), stopped cars and killed people on the basis of their religion, how every morning after the nighttime battles we walked to the abandoned lots behind our neighborhood to find the semi-burned carcasses of women with huge crosses shoved into their vaginas and men with their hands tied behind their backs killed by a bullet in the head and a burned cross on their chests. These are the Lebanese Forces who in the mid-1980s, after having lost Beirut, penetrated into the mountains south of Beirut (the Shouf, the Sidon District, etc.) and provoked every Druze and every Shiite that had so far had nothing to do with the war, triggering a massive backlash of ethnic cleansing by Walid Jumblatt's militias (today an ally of Geagea) that emptied the southern half of Lebanon of its Christians - except for the pockets along the Israeli border that stayed until the Israeli occupation ended in 2000.
This is but a sample of the activities and achievements of the Lebanese Forces, those saviors and defenders of the Christian Lebanese. Taken altogether, their management of the Lebanese crisis from its outset, whether one looks at it from a local, regional or international angle, has been a total failure, for the Christians have lost the war thanks to Geagea. And now, having earned the hatred of his own people, the Christian Lebanese, Geagea is trying to hang on to power by clinging to the coattails of Hariri and the Bush administration.
One cannot fathom how the Bush administration justifies to itself even talking to Samir Geagea when it should detain him and try him for crimes against humanity and war crimes. The Bush administration is making a huge mistake - like the mistakes it made for 60 years cavorting to criminals and dictators who mistreated their own people - by giving credibility to this criminal assassin. Once again, the Christian people of Lebanon are being betrayed by a short-sighted US foreign policy which hopes to defeat Hezbollah and Iran by cozying up to feudal warlords and criminal warlords.
Our hopes have been shattered. The lessons of September 11, 2001 have indeed not been learned. It has been said that the Americans don't have a sense of history. Samir Geagea in the White House in 2008 is the evidence that another huge mistake is being made by the Bush administration in the Middle East.
Fast forward to March 2008, and witness Samir Geagea one the most criminal warlords of the Lebanese War who leads the Lebanese Forces - now a party, but between 1975 and 1990 one of the most murderous militias whose political program is to eradicate the Lebanese State institutions and replace them by a Christian-based government under the leadership of the Maronite Patriarch. In other words, a Christian counterpart to what Hezbollah stands for today on the Muslim side of the equation.
Witness this assassin of thousands of innocent Lebanese of all denominations, including his own Maronite community, be welcomed to the White House by Steven Hadley and John Hanna. Witness the Bush administration licking the boot of this murderous gangster only to promote him as the "Christian" leader of the Hariri-Siniora-Jumblatt Sunni-Druze Mafia that calls itself "The March 14 Cedars Revolution". Witness the Bush administration call Geagea a "major" figure in the March 14 coalition, since back when the US was sponsoring the Syrian occupation of Lebanon throughout the 1980s and 1990s, and Syria was a friend of the US and a "factor of stability" in Lebanon (which then became an occupying force after 2003), Geagea's militiamen stood side-by-side with the Syrian soldiers, shelled the Christian sectors of Lebanon, and helped the Syrian occupation impose a 2-year long siege of the Christian sector to force the Christians to kneel and sign the infamous Taif Agreement that took power from the Christian President and gave it to the Sunni Prime Minister.
Witness the Bush administration give an official welcome to a murderous warlord who, notwithstanding his opposition to Hezbollah and to their fanatic Islamic platform, wants to impose a similarly fanatic and racist Christian platform of government for at least the Lebanese Christians, if not the entire country. This is the man whose Lebanese Forces militia's logo is a cross looking like a knife, with which they slaughtered untold numbers of Lebanese during those years when they controlled the streets and back alleys of the country. I was there during those years and I experienced first hand how they robbed people's houses (ours included: they were protecting us from the PLO and the Muslims), stopped cars and killed people on the basis of their religion, how every morning after the nighttime battles we walked to the abandoned lots behind our neighborhood to find the semi-burned carcasses of women with huge crosses shoved into their vaginas and men with their hands tied behind their backs killed by a bullet in the head and a burned cross on their chests. These are the Lebanese Forces who in the mid-1980s, after having lost Beirut, penetrated into the mountains south of Beirut (the Shouf, the Sidon District, etc.) and provoked every Druze and every Shiite that had so far had nothing to do with the war, triggering a massive backlash of ethnic cleansing by Walid Jumblatt's militias (today an ally of Geagea) that emptied the southern half of Lebanon of its Christians - except for the pockets along the Israeli border that stayed until the Israeli occupation ended in 2000.
This is but a sample of the activities and achievements of the Lebanese Forces, those saviors and defenders of the Christian Lebanese. Taken altogether, their management of the Lebanese crisis from its outset, whether one looks at it from a local, regional or international angle, has been a total failure, for the Christians have lost the war thanks to Geagea. And now, having earned the hatred of his own people, the Christian Lebanese, Geagea is trying to hang on to power by clinging to the coattails of Hariri and the Bush administration.
One cannot fathom how the Bush administration justifies to itself even talking to Samir Geagea when it should detain him and try him for crimes against humanity and war crimes. The Bush administration is making a huge mistake - like the mistakes it made for 60 years cavorting to criminals and dictators who mistreated their own people - by giving credibility to this criminal assassin. Once again, the Christian people of Lebanon are being betrayed by a short-sighted US foreign policy which hopes to defeat Hezbollah and Iran by cozying up to feudal warlords and criminal warlords.
Our hopes have been shattered. The lessons of September 11, 2001 have indeed not been learned. It has been said that the Americans don't have a sense of history. Samir Geagea in the White House in 2008 is the evidence that another huge mistake is being made by the Bush administration in the Middle East.
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