THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY OF BEIRUT OR THE US?

first rough draft

A college friend, now a professor at an Arab university, e-mailed me about the dilemma she and her husband are facing. Should they send their son to the American University of Beirut, which they prefer, or to an American university? Would it be safe to send him to Beirut?


On balance, I answered, the US would be safer, provided their son stays out of certain neighborhoods and avoids to the extent possible contact with the police, at times an uncontrollable force in the US. In Lebanon, I explained, there are two states, not one: the Saudi State sponsored by the harmful idiots, and the Syrian state sponsored by Iran.

THE SAUDI STATE

Years ago, at the end of the civil war, the late Rafiq Hariri, with the help of the Saudi royal family, conned the Israel-anchored harmful idiots into believing that if Prime Minister he would sign a peace treaty with their beloved Israel. That’s the word on the streets of Lebanon. He didn’t. But he did empty the national treasury, amassing as Prime Minister an estimated $17 billion fortune. Since he was a Saudi import, the man forgot he wasn’t a prince in Saudi Arabia where skimming $17 billion over a few years would be small potatoes. (Consider a very, very small example: the two billion dollar skimming allegation against Bandar bin Sultan in the Yamama arms deal between the UK and Saudi Arabia -- the investigation of which Tony Blair had scuttled.) Hariri amassed the fortune as Prime Minister by launching construction projects a la Roman Empire. A friend, a city planner, always reminds me that the easiest way for politicians to pillage is to launch ambitious construction projects.

Mr. Hariri did exactly that. He was the House of Saud’s gift to Lebanon.

According to Lebanese friends, not only did the man amass a fortune from his construction projects, which he launched as Prime Minister; he too had a couple of his banks, likely owned with the Saudi royals, lend the money to the bankrupt Lebanese state. Joy of joys: Not only did he pillage once, in the grandest of fashions, he, even after his death, had set up the institutions for continued pillaging through the state’s payment of interest to his banks (“debt servicing”) ad nauseam.


(Net result: The harmful idiots in Lebanon in good part are now by necessity the protectors of the Saudi and Hariri grand theft (“investments”) , as they are the mercenaries in Iraq for the Israelis against the Iranians. We are the whore of reactionary forces the Middle East over.)

Hariri is a typical sample of a harmful idiots’ assets. These Israel-obsessed harmful idiots have a knack for picking assets who pillage their countries blind. The harmful idiots back them all the way. So long as an asset dogs the apple of their eye, he/she can pillage to the outermost limits of their pathological greed.

THE MIDDLE EAST DOES HAVE HONEST POLITICIANS: CONSIDER FUAD CHEHAB, CHARLES HELOU, ELIAS SARKIS, SAEB SALAM, SALIM AL-HOSS, AND RACHID KARAMI.

In contrast, starting around 1958 until the early seventies, Lebanon had three presidents who lived modestly and never stole a penny: Fuad Chehab, Charles Helou, and Elias Sarkis. Chehab lived on $3 a day, with his wife. Helou never ever skimmed a penny from the national treasury. And Elias Sarkis, the aged bachelor, is said to have hosted women at the Presidential Palace (girlfriends) but never ever gave them a penny from the national treasury.

Amin Gemayyel was the harmful idiots’ first asset to become President of Lebanon. (His brother Bashir was actually the first, but he never made it. The Syrians.) Amin started it so to speak. Then Hariri took pillaging to stratospheric heights.

Saeb Salam, Rachid Karami, Salim al-Hoss (still alive) -- household names as Sunni Prime Ministers -- never stole money either. Salam’s only sin was that he smoked cigars and polluted each and every cabinet meeting, forcing Fuad Chehab to beg him to leave the meeting and smoke outside. Karami existed one step away from the life of a monk. No one, absolutely no one, ever doubted the integrity (and intelligence) of Salim al-Hoss. I mention the honest Presidents and Prime Ministers, the non-thieves, to rebut any attempt by the harmful idiots to stereotype Middle Easterners as corrupt. To justify their support of egregiously corrupt and pathologically greedy assets. The harmful idiots, if anything, encourage corruption. Consider the book of a couple of years ago: Economic Hitman.


More trouble is brewing for Lebanon. There’s way too much smoke that Israel and Jordan, on behalf of the Israel-adoring harmful idiot, have been training operatives for the Saudi State in Lebanon. These operatives are to balance the Iranian-Syrian state’s ability, through Hezbollah, to intimidate the Saudi State via assassinations. You see: the Iranian/Syrian state doesn’t have the money of the Saudi State; so it has to resort to force since it can never match the corrupting influence of the Saudis' money. Not to mention the open checkbook of the harmful idiots. (See prior post.)


The Saudi State floats on tons and tons of money, endless streams of that stuff. The Hariri family, by pocketing $17 billion of the Lebanese people’s money, has become a state within a state -- way more powerful than the visible state is or could be within any foreseeable future. The Hariri family, too, has the backing of the Saudi royal family, and of an unlimited supply of money from that country’s intelligence service. Accordingly, the Saudi state buys all those it can buy in Lebanon and outside. For instance, I’m a firm believer that Saudi/Hariri money was responsible for Russia not using its veto at the UN Security Council to block the establishment of the tribunal to investigate the assassination of Rafiq Hariri, and to prosecute the Syrian officials behind it. I was listening to the author of a recent book (Comrade J) on NPR who spoke about the extreme corruption of Putin and the circle of decision in Russia. I’m therefore confident that Saad Hariri and the Saudis deposited a couple hundred million dollars in a Swiss bank account for Putin and his men to not veto the formation of the tribunal.

More recently, Syria and Hezbollah did a volte face on backing Michel Suleiman to become President of Lebanon. A claim has been made that Suleiman had visited secretly the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. He did or not doesn’t matter much. I’m on record with my father telling him that whoever becomes President, or is considered a serious candidate, will have an agent of the Saudi State in Lebanon approach her people to inform them about the $30 million deposited for them in Switzerland.


THE IRANIAN/SYRIAN STATE

As things have evolved, Iran had developed allies who are eminently not corrupt: Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine. (That’s not to exculpate Hezbollah as a tool of terror -- non-conventional warfare -- for Iranian intelligence, but that’s a different topic.) Both Hezbollah and Hamas -- and likely any and all Islamist movements that will see the light of day -- built (and will build) their popularity not only on resistance. They built it on non-corruption and the provision of essential services. For instance, Mahmud al-Zahar, the Hamas leader, already has lost two children as martyrs to Israel’s guns. He lives modestly. Mahmoud Abbas’s son, in contrast, is said to be involved in a shady business deal with a cellular/communication company. So much so that some in the non-Saudi controlled Arab press -- a minute part of the Arab press -- refer to Mahmoud Abbas not as Abu Mazin, his non-de-guerre, but as Abu Business -- using the English word.

Abu Business is an asset of the Israel-loving harmful idiots. It befuddles me how the powers of reaction in the Arab World are so able to enroll the services of the Israel-cherishing harmful idiots on behalf of their uncontrollable and pathological greed. Mind you, the Soviet Union is no more and there’s no reason whatsoever to use our power on behalf of petty and disgusting greed. The case can easily and convincingly be made that we can fight terror by being progressive and dumping these one-dimensional money-hungry reactionary assets. But I guess we’re just as reactionary ourselves. Birds of a feather...

To describe the Iran-Syria state I should start by saying that Syria likely packs a decent amount of mistrust of Russia, particularly after Russia had failed to veto the Security Council Resolution to establish the international tribunal. The Syrians aren’t simpletons. They likely reached the same conclusion I did: that the Saudis and Hariri had made secret deposits for Putin and his crew in Switzerland in exchange for Russia not using the veto for the tribunal.

But Syria mistrusts the harmful idiots and their European and Arab proxies even more. Syria thinks strategically. One zillion Arab media personalities criticize Syria, daily. These work for the media empire owned by the princes of Saudi Arabia. Saudi intelligence channels the money through the princes to run that empire. The princes typically keep a part of that money (how much money do these people need? And for what? Can’t they see that the spread of diabetes among their ranks and the ranks of their people is directly related to their love of money?) The Saudi-owned media empire (most recent addition the Arabiya satellite television) are so fond of criticizing Syria for aligning with Iran. (I love to make friends feel uncomfortable about selling out for money and security.)

Hello? Who’s Syria to align with? Saudi Arabia? And what army does that country have? What missiles does it manufacture? Syria has a Joulan to retrieve from the colonialists next door, and an Arab mission (yes, Arab mission, the Saudi empire’s self-serving allegations notwithstanding) to protect now that the harmful idiots had eliminated the very center of secular pan-Arab power, dismantling it to smithereens on behalf of their dear Israelis and their equally dear Jewish Right. Should Syria follow the advice of the prolific Raghida Dergham (al-Hayat) and do what she does, which is kiss ass with the Saudis? (Ms. Dergham does it the sophisticated way, under the allure of balance-of-power theory.) How would that return the Joulan?

(Note: Thanking God for the internet, and the Pentagon -- not -- which developed it, I at times use Google Languages and discover yet more Arab sites. I recently discovered a Syrian one, quite sophisticated. I’m telling you: it’s refreshing to read that site. While the Saudis have to bite the bullet when it comes to the fact that they have and will have zero influence in the US -- even after they make the payments to useless though extremely harmful GW and Cheney after they leave office -- the fact is that Israel has checked any and all significant potential political sources of influence for the Saudis. Israel has even made superb inroads into the ranks of self-appointed Arab-American leaders. ( I told you I like to get on the nerves of friends who sold out for security.) And that’s why the Syrian site is liberating. It doesn’t have a Raghida Dergham to skirt this and that issue when it comes to the powerless providers of her paycheck. The Syrian site talks about US policies as Israeli policies. Period. Amazing. It’s aware of ruses and traps the Israel-ululating harmful idiots set up for it, either directly or through their European proxies. Seriously, I’m impressed, especially that I live in the politically correct culture where even old friends stop contacting you when they ogle your use of the words “Jewish Right.” Oh my God, my career, they scream!)

Syria cannot let go of Lebanon, we all know it. Hezbollah is its army. Syria isn’t by definition anti-US; it really isn’t. A Lebanese friend, a businessman who travels across the Arab World, including Syria and Europe, would remind me that the Syrian governing elite adores the US, but it sees the US in the hands of Israel and its proxies. By the way, this friend is not biased; if anything he hated the Syrians for obvious Lebanese Christian reasons and because the Syrians had imprisoned him during the civil war -- which forced him into self-exile for nearly two decades.) Syria just cannot assess strategically any hope of achieving the liberation of its territory from the Israelis by relying on the Saudi “brothers.” Yes, these can deposit a few hundred millions in secret bank accounts for Bashar Asad and his coterie. So? You make the money, then what? You become a Abdel-Halim Khaddam, that little man who tormented Lebanon, and now lives in exile in a Saudi-funded palace in Paris. (The little dwarf must feel quite insignificant, maybe even treasonous, being on the same side as the colonialists who occupy his country.)

Accept defeat and the loss of the Joulan? And what about the Palestinian state, a pillar of Arab nationalism for the Syrian government, as it had been for the Iraqi pre-invasion? Will Raghida Dergham’s employers, who have no armies of significance, and who have zero influence with the Israel-anchored country, regain the Joulan for them and see to the establishment of a Palestinian state on all the pre-1967 territory? Shouldn’t the Saudis appreciate the fact that the only influence left for them -- other than making secret payments -- is one borne out of the effective equilibrium in power that Iran has established with Israel? In other words, what influence they have is very much a structural fluke, and they should be thanking Iran/Syria for it -- and, of course, GW for eliminating the balancer of Iranian power -- Arab Iraq?

Besides, the thinking of the actual majority in Lebanon is quite practical. (The so-called majority the Saudi State in Lebanon claims to have is due to a ruse the Hariris used where Hezbollah lent them its support in the Baabda electoral district in exchange for their promise not to try to disarm it. Then they did a volte face under pressure from the harmful idiots.) The thinking of the actual majority is: haven’t the Saudi Hariris made enough money from that poor country called Lebanon? Do they really need to keep it as their plantation forever and ever? Hey, not that they couldn’t have once, when they had been allied to the Syrians. The late Rafiq Hariri had been a close friend of Syria’s and he had fed that country’s occupying elite quite a lot from Lebanon’s treasury, with abandon my Lebanese friends would say. And the Syrians would’ve let him pillage the country forever as long as he fed them by sinking his little farm (Lebanon) deeper into debt, and having his banks lend the money to the peons, and have the slaves sweat payments to service the debt.


But Rafiq Hariri made the mistake of believing the harmful idiots -- that these intended (and, more importantly, would be able) on pushing the Syrians out of Lebanon. Anyone with a modicum ability to analyze would’ve concluded otherwise. (Hariri needed to hire one of these shrewd Syrian strategists, not the CIA (Lebanese) men he had around him.) He didn’t understand that even the CIA becomes an idiot when it’s ordered to execute the policy of harmful idiots. When the CIA is ordered to push a policy, however harmful and idiotic, it pushes it. The CIA called in their chips with Hariri: it was time for the late Rafiq Hariri to fit into the American Jewish Right’s Greater Middle East initiative, to pay back for the $17 billion they allowed him to pillage as Prime Minister. He didn’t have independent analysts around him. He paid the price for that. He paid it with his life.

To reiterate: Syria cannot afford to make mistakes in Lebanon, lest the international tribunal becomes effective. Lucky for it, it now has a majority of the Lebanese Christians on its side, reluctantly, but they have no choice. They have seen the harmful idiots and their Israelis sell them down the drain, allowing Syrian tanks and armored troops to conquer Mount Lebanon -- all to have Syria give an “Arab cover”to Bush father’s liberation of Kuwait. Which itself was a shameless set up by the harmful idiots and Kuwaiti intelligence who entrapped Saddam Hussein into invading. Rira bien qui rira le dernier, says the French proverb. Now we’re the ones entrapped.

Hey, lest you forget: the harmful idiots had earlier destroyed Lebanon by miscalculating when they, and their Jordanians, on behalf of their dear Israelis, manufactured the Lebanese civil war. They meant to rein in the Palestinian resistance to avoid the formation of a Palestinian state, so that the apple of their eye could lord over the victims of its colonialist schemes. So, in effect, the harmful idiots have screwed their natural allies -- the Arab Christians of Lebanon -- twice, with disastrous results. And they screwed them a third time when they brought in Rafiq Hariri to pillage the country the Arab Christians of Lebanon, and the Arab Sunni of West Beirut, had built together.

But things don’t end here. The Lebanese Christians are on their way to becoming Arab nationalists. Why? They’ve lost secular Iraq. They’re witnesses to the mass exodus of the Iraqi Christians who now see no future for themselves in Iraq. The Lebanese Christians, especially the Maronites, by far the most pro-Western community in the Middle East, which connections to the West go back a few centuries, aren’t about to accept the same fate as their Iraqi counterparts. They now refer to their new awakening as “kay Nabqa” (“So that we Remain” [in Lebanon and as a community].) It’s a struggle for existence after having lost nearly everything fighting wars on behalf of Israel.

Not that the Lebanese Christians don’t appreciate Saudi Arabia. Even at the height of criminal mass murder by Bashir Gemayyel of innocent Sunni Muslims (e.g., Black Saturday), there wasn’t a single retaliatory act by Saudi Arabia or any other Arab country against a Lebanese or any Arab Christian. To all Arabs, the Lebanese were brothers who had gone mad.

And there was a lot of truth to this. My late mother would often tell the story about the late Saeb Salam, a Sunni leader and many-time Prime Minister. Mr. Salam had headed the Maqasid Sunni Muslim charity in Beirut. When once he was examining the ledger of families receiving Maqasid help, he was said to have commented to his aides : “there are more Christian families on this ledger than Muslim.” “Yes,” his aides were said to have replied, adding, “We eat together or we starve together.”

But no one in his right mind thinks Saudi Arabia or the harmful idiots can protect anyone. Syria, on the other hand, can. The very Walid Jumblatt, the mouthy member of the Saudi State in Lebanon, who now meets with King Abdallah regularly, as if he headed a million-man-army, once made use of Syria’s strength to humiliate the Christians. There’s hardly any Druze community left in Lebanon. Yet, fear not. The Tailors’ Corps of the Syrian armed forces went to work. It copied and put out hundreds if not thousands of Jumblatt’s Lebanese Socialist Party militia uniforms. Syrian intelligence then dressed their Palestinian and Syrian men as fighters of that militia. These men defeated the Israel-backed Christian Lebanese Forces, more than once. Worse: these very men committed two gruesome massacres against innocent Christian civilians: Damour and Bhamdoun. Now the Christians have engineered a rapprochement with Syria. Isn’t that which is good for the goose -- isn’t it good for the gander?

THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY OF BEIRUT

No one wants a civil war in Lebanon. The politicians know that a civil war would mean the end of Lebanon’s banking system. Hezbollah is aware that a lot of the money in that banking system, if not most, belongs to Shia from West Africa. It’s not about to see the banking system disintegrate. Nor is Hariri and the Saudi State. After all they own so much of that banking system!

So, I emailed my friend telling her that Lebanon isn’t that dangerous. But, on balance, the US is safer. She agreed.