Back of the Envelope

It looks like the Lebanese aren't going to be intimidated by Hezbollah, after all:

Hundreds of thousands of anti-Syrian demonstrators flooded the capital Monday in the biggest protest ever in Lebanon, surpassing the turnout for an earlier pro-Damascus rally organized by the Islamic militant group Hezbollah (search). In a show of national unity, Sunnis, Druse and Christians packed Martyrs' Square as brass bands played and balloons soared skyward.

The rally, perhaps the biggest anti-government demonstration ever staged in the Arab world, was the opposition's bid to regain momentum after two serious blows: the reinstatement of the pro-Syrian prime minister and a huge rally last week by the Shiite group Hezbollah.

I'll admit that I was worried after the Hezbollah protest. Hezbollah is powerful and unaccountably popular, and I wasn't certain that their ability to raise sheer numbers, whether by honest means or with coercion and deceit, could be matched by the Lebanese anti-Syrian movement. It looks like I was mistaken. This protest numbered between 800,000 and 1 million, which makes it not just impressive, but breath-taking, for a country whose population is 3.5 million.

After the Hezbollah protest, the steady progress of Lebanese freedom seemed to pause. Bush, undaunted, continued to insist that Assad move his forces out of Lebanon, and Assad agreed to comply, but Karami, Syria's puppet Prime Minister, was re-installed just days after the initial anti-Syria protests forced him to resign. I was worried that Hezbollah's claim to represent the will of the people might cost the Lebanese independence movement its legitimacy in the eyes of the world, leading to a compromise with Syria. Bush would probably have held firm, though, and convinced Syria to leave. Hezbollah was doubtless hoping that even if Syria was forced to leave, their show of power would put them in a position to take control. It might have, if they hadn't made the mistake I pointed out in my last post. They chose the wrong side. If their side had won the "will of the people" contest, then perhaps, even with Syria gone, they would have taken a leadership role. But by siding against freedom, they showed the people that they did not represent them, and if the people had the courage to demonstrate it, Hezbollah would lose. And unfortunately for Hezbollah, the people did. Hezbollah's not going away, but I doubt they will ever have the role in Lebanese politics that they had hoped for.

I learned a new word from Rich Lowry yesterday:

One of the inconveniences of political debate is that occasionally reality intrudes to invalidate a given position no matter how much its partisans want to believe it. This is what has been happening recently to the argument that the invasion of Iraq produced an irrecoverable mess. Although surely setbacks still await us in Iraq and the Middle East, stunning headlines from the region have left many liberals perversely glum about upbeat news.

Schadenfreude has faded into its happiness-hating opposite, gluckschmerz. Liberal journalist Kurt Andersen has written in New York magazine of the guilty “pleasure liberals took in bad news from Iraq, which seemed sure to hurt the administration.” According to Andersen, the successful Iraqi elections changed the mood. For Bush critics, this inspiring event was “unexpectedly unsettling,” since they so “hat[ed] the idea of a victory presided over by the Bush team.”
...
Has the administration gotten a few fortunate breaks in the Middle East lately? Well, yes. Asked how he seemed to make so many lucky saves, the great Montreal Canadien goalie Ken Dryden explained that it was his job to be in the right position to get lucky. By toppling Saddam Hussein and insisting on elections in Iraq, while emphasizing the power of freedom, Bush has put the United States in the right position to encourage and take advantage of democratic irruptions in the region.

I'll have to remember the word glueckschmerz, as yourish.com insists it should be spelled.

Hezbollah has arranged a huge counterprotest against Lebanese independence:

Nearly 500,000 pro-Syrian protesters waved flags and chanted anti-American slogans in a central Beirut square Tuesday, answering a nationwide call by the militant Shiite Muslim Hezbollah group for a demonstration to counter weeks of massive rallies demanding Syrian forces leave Lebanon.

Organizers handed out Lebanese flags and directed the men and women to separate sections of Riad Solh Square. Loudspeakers blared militant songs urging resistance to foreign interference. Demonstrators held up pictures of Syrian President Bashar Assad and signs saying, "Syria & Lebanon brothers forever."

Other placards read: "America is the source of terrorism"; "All our disasters are from America"; "No to American-Zionist intervention; Yes to Lebanese-Syrian brotherhood."

Black-clad Hezbollah guards handled security, lining the perimeter of the square and taking position on rooftops. Trained dogs sniffed for bombs.

First the bad news: This is seven times as big as the protests for Lebanese independence. And while many people have argued that the numbers were exaggerated and people were forced to participate (remember Saddam's rallies?), it's also true that Hezbollah is immensely powerful and, unfortunately, popular.

Now the good news: While it is easy to arrange rallies when you're in power, in places like Lebanon it's very hard to arrange them when you're not in power, so doing a direct numbers to numbers comparison is not very useful. Second, the fact that Hezbollah feels the need to arrange this protest, and to demonstrate their massive numbers, shows that they're worried. There's something ultimately self-defeating in this attempt to show that a majority opposes independence, since it concedes that the will of the people matters, and re-inforces democratic principles. That doesn't necessarily mean democracy will come from it, since plenty of tyrannies pay lip service to the will of the people, but it admits that this is a battle of hearts and minds rather than guns and bombs.

Finally, the most important aspect of this is that Hezbollah has chosen a side, and demonstrated publicly that they are against freedom. This is important, considering that for a time Lebanese opposition leaders were courting Hezbollah's support. Now they and everyone else know whose side Hezbollah is really on. One of the purposes of our actions in the Middle East is to marginalize terrorists and terrorism, and the way to do this is to show that what terrorists want is not what is best for the people. Thus it is a good thing to see terrorists standing against the rising tide of freedom, because it demonstrates to all who would admire them what they really stand for. And if they're drowned by that tide, so much the better.

On that note, I'll end with a quote from Considerettes:

Aside from all the schizophrenia going on here, the larger point to be made is that Bush and crew were often derided when they said that the perpetrators of 9/11 attacked us because they hated our way of life, our freedoms. Detractors insisted that the reasons had to do more with our foreign policy and our pro-Israel stance. But as the insurgency in Iraq and these demonstrations by Hezbollah show, it really is democracy that they fear. They'd prefer to be an occupied country than have the will of the people heard. That's why they hate us; because we're free.

It looks like the Armanious murders were not religiously motivated:

The upstairs tenant of an Egyptian Christian family found slain in their home in January and another man have been charged in the killings, and authorities said Friday the motive was robbery, not religious fanaticism.

Two men already on parole for drug offenses pleaded not guilty to four counts of murder in the Jan. 11 killing of the Armanious family, which had caused tension between Christians and Muslims in New Jersey.

I never thought that the murders were organized terrorism, but I did think that religious hatred seemed like the most likely motive. Looking at what I wrote about this earlier, I feel somewhat foolish, as it looks like my gut feeling was wrong. Still, while my thoughts on the particulars of this case were wrong, I haven't changed my mind about any of the general remarks.

It sure looks like it, doesn't it? Mark Steyn rattles off the statistics:

Consider just the past couple of days' news: not the ever more desperate depravity of the floundering "insurgency", but the real popular Arab resistance the car-bombers and the head-hackers are flailing against: the Saudi foreign minister, who by remarkable coincidence goes by the name of Prince Saud, told Newsweek that women would be voting in the next Saudi election. "That is going to be good for the election," he said, "because I think women are more sensible voters than men."

Four-time Egyptian election winner - and with 90 per cent of the vote! - President Mubarak announced that next polling day he wouldn't mind an opponent. Ordering his stenographer to change the constitution to permit the first multi-choice presidential elections in Egyptian history, His Excellency said the country would benefit from "more freedom and democracy". The state-run TV network hailed the president's speech as a "historical decision in the nation's 7,000-year-old march toward democracy". After 7,000 years on the march, they're barely out of the parking lot, so Mubarak's move is, as they say, a step in the right direction.

Meanwhile in Damascus, Boy Assad, having badly overplayed his hand in Lebanon and after months of denying that he was harbouring any refugee Saddamites, suddenly discovered that - wouldja believe it? - Saddam's brother and 29 other bigshot Baghdad Baathists were holed up in north-eastern Syria, and promptly handed them over to the Iraqi government.

And, for perhaps the most remarkable development, consider this report from Mohammed Ballas of Associated Press: "Palestinians expressed anger on Saturday at an overnight suicide bombing in Tel Aviv that killed four Israelis and threatened a fragile truce, a departure from former times when they welcomed attacks on their Israeli foes."

No disrespect to Associated Press, but I was disinclined to take their word for it. However, Charles Johnson, whose Little Green Footballs website has done an invaluable job these past three years presenting the ugly truth about Palestinian death-cultism, reported that he went hunting around the internet for the usual photographs of deliriously happy Gazans dancing in the street and handing out sweets to celebrate the latest addition to the pile of Jew corpses - and, to his surprise, couldn't find any.

Why is all this happening? Answer: January 30. Don't take my word for it, listen to Walid Jumblatt, big-time Lebanese Druze leader and a man of impeccable anti-American credentials: "I was cynical about Iraq. But when I saw the Iraqi people voting three weeks ago, eight million of them, it was the start of a new Arab world. The Berlin Wall has fallen."

Elections in Iraq and Palestine, reforms in Egypt, the Syrian puppet government resigning in Lebanon... it's crazy, but we might actually see democracy throughout the Middle East in the next ten years, and we'll have Bush to blame.

Now if only we don't lose it in Russia.

Update: Welcome, Slate readers! If you're wondering where I said Bush was too moderate, that would be here. Slate makes me sound like I'm way off in the far Right.