Hizbollah Assassinates Another Lebanese Leader?
It’s too early to know for certain but I’d say it’s a definite possibility after reading this article.
Prominent anti-Syrian Christian politician Pierre Gemayel was assassinated in a suburb of Beirut on Tuesday, his Phalange Party radio station and Lebanon’s official news agency reported. The slaying will certainly heighten political tensions in Lebanon, where the leading Muslim Shiite party Hizbollah has threatened to topple the government if it does not get a bigger say in Cabinet decision-making.
Captain Ed is wondering if this assassination will have the same effect as Rafiq Harriri’s assasination. It’s still too early to know but I agree with Captain Ed that this has the same potential of blowing up in Hizbollah’s face.
It’ll be interesting to see what actions the Bush administration take after this assassination. The first step should be to ignore the Baker Commission if they suggest that we should include Syria and Iran in a Middle Eastern forum on ’solving’ the Iraq war problem. This assassination attempt should eliminate any doubts on whether they’d rather have peace or turmoil in their neighborhood. This is proof positive that they prefer turmoil in the region.
Saad Hariri, leader of the anti-Syrian parliamentary majority, broke off a televised news conference after hearing Gemayel had been shot. In an interview with CNN, Hariri praised him as “a friend, a brother to all of us” and appeared to break down after saying: “We will bring justice to all those who killed him.” Gemayel, the minister of industry and son of former President Amin Gemayel, was a supporter of the anti-Syrian parliamentary majority, which is locked in a power struggle with pro-Syrian factions led by Hezbollah.
I hope that they’ve increased the security around Hariri. Let’s also hope that this sparks the proud Lebanese people to restart the Cedar Revolution, which happened in the wake of Rafiq Hariri’s assassination.
As I recall at the time, the French took it very personally when Syria/Hizbollah assassinated the elder Hariri. I’d suggest that this represents another opportunity for President Bush to work with the French at the Security Council. Let’s hope that they’d impose sanctions on Syria as a result of this.
Gemayel is the third prominent figure in Lebanon to be assassinated in the past two years. Former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, Saad Hariri’s father, was killed in a car bombing in February 2005, and lawmaker and newspaper manager Gibran Tueni was killed in a car bombing in December 2005.
It’s time that the U.S. tightened up their policies on Syria and Iran. This event should provide ample justification for that tightening.
Technorati Tags: Hezbollah, Rafiq Hariri, Terrorism, Iran
Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog
November 21st, 2006 at 10:31 am
[...] Cross-posted at California Conservative Categories: National Security, Iraq, Iran, Terrorism, President Bush, Middle East, United Nations | [...]
November 27th, 2006 at 7:08 pm
This post is riddled with journalistic irresponsibility and intellectual dishonesty. Regardless of whatever suspicions there may be about the killers, and however likely it is that a Syrian/Shi’ite connection exists, the way way your post is worded would lead anyone to believe that the identity of the assassins is a known fact. Do you aim to actually inform your readers or not?