tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13734864.post115289537971594595..comments2024-01-04T08:02:29.500-05:00Comments on Attempts: Report from BeirutStephenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16524368948187746248noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13734864.post-1153947551857168482006-07-26T16:59:00.000-04:002006-07-26T16:59:00.000-04:00You know, after two weeks of this war, my comments...You know, after two weeks of this war, my comments above seem uncharitable and also presumptuous.<BR/><BR/>I am not a Lebanese and I don't really understand all the factors. <BR/><BR/>No matter what mistakes the Lebanese have made, they did not deserve what the IDF is doing to them. Lebanon's infrastructure is destroyed. Hundreds dead. Hundreds of thousands displaced.<BR/><BR/>And history will show that this war will not achieve Israel's objectives either. <BR/><BR/>It's a terrible, terrible waste.Leila Abu-Sabahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14161833022292457787noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13734864.post-1152899609035910022006-07-14T13:53:00.000-04:002006-07-14T13:53:00.000-04:00Thanks Stephen for posting this. Very helpful, and...Thanks Stephen for posting this. Very helpful, and I linked on <A HREF="http://bedouina.typepad.com" REL="nofollow">my blog.</A><BR/><BR/>Here's a quote that jumped out at me:<BR/>"Although most respect hezbollah for the social services it provides to half of the country that the government is not equipped to do"<BR/><BR/>When I visited Lebanon in 2000 I was struck, unfavorably, at all the money being poured into luxury developments - hotels and villas and apartment buildings - while the middle and lower classes in the far reaches of the country were getting nothing.<BR/><BR/>THere was money to build a Disneyesque neo-Ottoman downtown playground for rich people, but no money for hospitals, schools and affordable housing. Why?<BR/><BR/>So then the Islamists stepped into the breech. Well. This is what happened in Cairo starting in the 1980s - there was a NY Times article about it at least 16 years ago, if not longer, in which the Cairo government had given up on many poor neighborhoods - no sewers or power, much less hospitals - and the fundamentalists were stepping in to provide the services. <BR/><BR/>Maybe providing services to the poor is unfashionable in current economic policy - it smacks of socialism - but FDR knew that at the very least it takes the sizzle out of popular unrest and social movements resistant to the powers that be.<BR/><BR/>More simply - let the poor starve and swelter in their own filth, let the extremists organize and take care of them, and then the poor will be loyal to the extremists. <BR/><BR/>Some of Lebanon's problems are of their own making. You cannot lift up only the rich and leave a vast swath of the poor and unhappy all around without consequences. Disarming Hizbollah is the least of it (but needed to have been done long ago). Why did the Lebanese government abandon the South? Why all the money poured into downtown BEirut, to attract wealthy foreigners, but "not equipped to provide services" to Sidon, Tyre and points south? There are many, many Lebanese (and Palestinian refugee residents of Lebanon) with the skills to provide those services. They needed money and infrastructure. Why wasn't this done?<BR/><BR/>Now we are all paying the price. No, it's not just that Hizbullah has guns and organization. It's that Lebanon ceded the South to them, politically, economically and militarily, out of snobbery as much as politics. And perhaps out of greed - building showy high-rises in Beirut was more fun and attractive than building pedestrian hospitals and housing projects in smaller cities.Leila Abu-Sabahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14161833022292457787noreply@blogger.com