For those curious about the Byzantine world of Lebanese politics and how the United Stats fits it to it, this article from Lebanon’s L’Orient Le Jour will provide a glimpse.
This article, written by L’Orient Le Jour’s Issa Goraieb, discusses the controversy that erupted after Secretary of State Clinton, during her first trip to Beirut, visited the tomb of former Prime Minister Rafik Harari, who it is widely believed was assassinated in a Syria-sponsored hit in 2005.
In berating criticism of Hillary’s visit to Harari’s tomb by General Michel Aoun, one of Lebanon’s most popular Christian leaders, Goraieb writes in part:
“No less striking in its awkwardness was Aoun’s denunciation of the ritual that all foreign guests are subject to: going to pray, as Hillary Clinton did, at the tomb of [slain Prime Minister] Rafik Hariri, when there is already a monument designed for this type of ceremony: the monument to the Unknown Soldier. For if one likes to believe, like the general, that no one in this country can claim to hold the unenviable monopoly on martyrdom; and if it is equally true that while he lived, Rafik Hariri never brought unanimity among Lebanese, it seems to have eluded Aoun that all of the posthumous tributes to the memory of our assassinated former prime minister are also, and perhaps most importantly, a denunciation of the despicable terrorism that killed so many of our leaders in politics and public opinion, a denial of impunity for the assassins, and an act of faith in the reliability and impartiality of international justice.”
Editorial by Issa Goraieb
April 29, 2009
Translated By L. McKenzie Zeiss
Lebanon – L’Orient Le Jour – Original Article (French)
From Hillary Clinton’s whirlwind visit to Beirut last Sunday, we will above all remember her warm and insistent praise of the virtues of moderation in a country where the most unbridled political passions have been unleashed these past few years. This fact is hardly fortuitous and precisely conveys the amount of change that the advent of the Obama Administration represents for our country.What hasn’t changed one iota, judging by public indications, is the firm engagement of the United States in favor of the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of our country, as well as the assurance that its interests will not be sacrificed on the altar of accommodating the influential states in the region [Syria and Iran]. In that vein, the Secretary of State hasn’t failed to say unambiguously that Washington continues to support the underlying principles of the Cedar Revolution. [triggered by the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri on February 14, 2005].
READ ON AT WORLDMEETS.US, your most trusted translator and aggregator of foreign news and views about our nation.
Founder and Managing Editor of Worldmeets.US