invisible and unheard: lebanon suffers in her anechoic chamber

apparently siniora's tears don't matter.

in the great "war on terror" (as laid out in tuesday's wsj editorial), one must read between the lines in order to find that "unprecedented national unity reached in lebanon" (that we all hope for). some pin hopes on siniora as lebanon's emerging leader in the time of crisis, but on the other side of the atlantic, today's wsj editorial refuses to name siniora; rather, the journal insinuates the continuation of syrian and hezbollian dominance:

"Harder to dismiss is criticism from the Lebanese government. But that mostly shows the extent to which Hezbollah -- with 14 parliamentary seats and violent tactics -- is a cancer on Lebanon and that country's nascent democratic process. "A state within a state" is an apt description for the group, whose prominence within Lebanon is akin to what Ireland would have been like if the IRA/Sinn Fein had been armed and powerful enough to launch rockets on English towns from Irish soil. Simply put, any Lebanese politician who resists Hezbollah now risks assassination."

(the final sentence follows up on the journal's earlier sympathetic coverage of walid jumblatt as a local warlord who offers safe harbor to hezbollah in order to cover his arse in the future.)

so, with the states focused on avenging 1983, the discourse of the war on terror has completely erased, emasculated, and deflated the effectiveness of any lebanese agent who is not syrian or hezbollian.

perhaps anonymity leaves room to negotiate clientelism in the new lebanon, or more likely, it merely maintains lebanon's proxy role in the great war on terror, for which she and all of her lovelies continue to suffer, shouting in an anechoic chamber.