The Syria Assassination - Flopping Aces

UPDATE

Hugh Hewitt interview of VDH below

END UPDATE

So now we see what November 7th has wrought.

The Democrats have been trying to get Bush and our Government to make amends with Syria and Iran every since the election. All so we can get out of dodge in Iraq. We can now see the results of this kind of thinking. Both Syria and Iran can see the paper tiger re-emerging so what do they do? They start to kill off those who will oppose them:

Lebanese Industry Minister Pierre Gemayel, a vocal opponent of Syrian involvement in the country and a leader of the country’s Maronite Christian minority, was assassinated in Beirut Tuesday, intensifying an already volatile situation and pushing the country’s government a step closer to collapse.

Prime Minister Fouad Siniora later told the nation in a televised address that the killing “will not intimidate us” but will increase the government’s determination to go ahead with an international tribunal to try those responsible for last year’s assassination of former prime minister Rafiq al-Hariri.

Gemayel, 34, was gunned down Tuesday morning as his car drove through a Christian suburb, his sedan riddled with bullet holes. He was rushed to St. Joseph’s Hospital shortly after 3 p.m. local time (9 a.m. EST), and a distraught crowd quickly gathered to wait for information of his condition.

No official announcement was made in the crowded lobby, but word soon spread that the young Cabinet minister was dead.

“There’s nothing left to live for,” one woman cried out, as sobs and wails rose around her.

President Bush, speaking to U.S. troops in Hawaii, strongly condemned the killing and made it plain that he suspects that it was part of an effort backed by Iran and Syria to undermine the Lebanese government.

“We support the Siniora government and its democracy, and we support the Lebanese people’s desire to live in peace,” Bush said during remarks at Hickam Air Force Base in Honolulu. “And we support their efforts to defend their democracy against attempts by Syria, Iran and allies, to foment instability and violence in that important country.”

Bush also demanded that the United Nations immediately convene a special tribunal to investigate the assassination of Hariri. ” I strongly believe the United Nations Security Council ought to act today,” Bush said.

Syria can see the writing on the wall after November 7th. America will not be united to help their allies fight a evil Syrian regime so why not take out the Lebanese cabinet. Michael J. Totten has been updating his blog all day with very important information. The most important being the fact that had they been successful in killing Michel Pharaon a coup would have occurred:

UPDATE: Just spoke to a friend of mine in Lebanon. I did not realize until now that Gemayel was a member of the Lebanese cabinet. The Hezbollah/Syrian axis has been trying to bring down the government by pressuring three more members to resign. One down, two to go. Looks like the coup d’etat is in progress.

UPDATE: Abu Takla in the comments says “one more to go, not 2. If they assassinate one more minister, the cabinet is automatically dissolved, because it would lack the two-thirds + 1 it needs to be constitutional.”

UPDATE: Another member of Lebanon’s political cabinet, Michel Pharaon was targetted with assassination today. He survived. But if the bastards had gotten him, the government would have fallen and stage one of the coup would be over.

UPDATE: Hezbollah is planning massive street “protests” on Thursday. Tony Badran notes: “This assassination will likely ensure that if such street rallies do take place, clashes would erupt, as it’s clear that the Syrians are set on that. (Just another reminder for the idiots who believe Syria is a force of “stability.”) Syria has a primary objective that outweighs everything else: kill the Hariri tribunal, and redominate Lebanon at any cost. This is nothing short than a fight to the death for the Syrians. And, as these thugs have done throughout their bloody history, they will kill anyone.”

The Belmont Club reminds us what Barack Obama said recently which puts into perspective how in the world something like this has occurred:

The results of the November election have sent the clear message that America is in retreat. Barack Obama recently said:

These are serious times for our country, and with their votes two weeks ago, Americans demanded a feasible strategy with defined goals in Iraq â€“ a strategy no longer driven by ideology and politics, but one that is based on a realistic assessment of the sobering facts on the ground and our interests in the region. …

It may be politically advantageous for the President to simply define victory as staying and defeat as leaving, but it prevents a serious conversation about the realistic objectives we can still achieve in Iraq. Dreams of democracy and hopes for a perfect government are now just that â€“ dreams and hopes. We must instead turn our focus to those concrete objectives that are possible to attain â€“ namely, preventing Iraq from becoming what Afghanistan once was, maintaining our influence in the Middle East, and forging a political settlement to stop the sectarian violence so that our troops can come home. …

Shorn of its rhetoric, Obama’s message is simple. It is not a formula for winning. It is a formula about how to get the hell out of Dodge.

Is this the Archduke Franz Ferdinand moment? Or will we go back to the 90’s and the 30’s where we appease anyone and anything as long as there is peace.

It is simply madness to believe we should negotiate with a country such as Syria. Lunacy!

Lets all hope Bush turns down any Baker/Democrat proposal that includes appeasement and negotiation.

UPDATE

Hugh Hewitt just had Victor Davis Hanson on his show and it’s a must listen. It’s about 15 minutes but you should not miss it.

Listen here.

UPDATE II

A. Jacksonian at Dumb Looks Still Free has a wonderful post that was written before this Lebanon assassination but which still rings true. He writes that the left’s dependence on those who failed for over 40 years to get rid of the Soviet Union to somehow fix Iraq is a fools errand:

Today, my friends, we are gathered together to pay our final respects to ‘Realpolitik’ and ‘realistic diplomacy’ and ‘pramatic geostrategic statesmanship’. While they still have nodding practitioners advocating these things, like Brent Scowcroft, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Henry Kissinger, and James A. Baker III, they have all grown old and set in their ways of viewing the world and that viewpoint is as arthritic as the Soviet Union was just before its completely unexpected collapse. Each of these men and all of their Foreign Policy outlooks have had to live in the environment in which a Rational Opposition Nation State was the nemesis of the United States. That being the Soviet Union and its various, nefarious allies, we must also see that as that Nation disappeared from the face of the Earth so did the underpinnings of all diplomacy that grew up in the immediate post-WWII era. The Cold War did not end with a thaw and melting of the USSR, but its sudden sublimation from solid to gaseous form almost overnight. None of them could have ever predicted that, and the leaden viewpoint on HOW Nation States act and move has proven to be deeply out of touch with the actual reality of the world.

[…]If they could not stop al Qaeda from forming nor find a way to fight it THEN and that encouraged it to grow, what makes anyone think that running from Iraq will come to ANY GOOD END AT ALL?

Because these are the exact, self-same bozos that got us INTO THIS MESS and they have ZERO idea of how to clean it up.

That is why we come here today to bury ‘Realpolitik’ and ‘Geostrategic Diplomacy’ and all the other garbage that let the Cold War drag on for DECADES when the USSR was one of the weakest industrialized Nations on the Planet. These swell fools want a ‘balance of power’ where NONE exists. They have NO idea of how to fight ‘Asymmetrical War’ or of dealing with ‘Non-Nation State Warfare’. It is time to bury these ideas as they have helped NO ONE and put us ALL in dire danger by encouraging a way to bring down ALL Nations and then telling us that they can’t figure out how to STOP IT.

I prefer to stand with the much more ‘on the ground’ group that Founded this Nation as they gave us ALL THE TOOLS to fight such threats.

While he writes mostly about Iraq this story is all one and the same. Syria and Iran can feel that our resolve is weakening. They can taste it. Now they are trying to test us.

We must pass this test and the first order of business would be to tell Baker, Kissinger and the rest of the gang to go pound sand. This is not the cold war. This is not even a new war.

This is World War III. The fight against fanatical Islam has been and will continue to be a worldwide conflict.

Lets hope we have the resolve to see this through as our grandfathers did.

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Curt

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