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Syria's Role Forces Hard Look at Lebanon Sovereignty: The international community has had to confront a long-ignored issue after the reported meddling in the proxy state's presidential vote. (Rania Abouzeid and Megan K. Stack, September 18, 2004, LA Times)

Why Syria would risk further antagonizing the West is baffling. With or without Lahoud, Syria was unlikely to lose its grip on Lebanon. Under current circumstances, no president would be able to run Lebanon without Syria's backing, and Damascus had its pick of favorable candidates.

"I think Bashar Assad is still reading from the Baathist book of the late 1960s," An Nahar publisher Tueni said. "The international community was waiting for him to produce positive signs of change within the Syrian regime."

But Assad and his advisors may have had their reasons.

Syria trusted Lahoud to protect Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed militia whose troops line Lebanon's southern border with Israel. Syria may also have wanted a president strong enough to counterbalance Lebanon's prime minister, billionaire businessman Rafik Hariri.

Whatever the logic, analysts called the amendment a serious miscalculation on Syria's part.

Even within Syria, a country that tolerates little debate over government policy, the move has sparked an annoyed, albeit quiet, backlash from the political elite.

And in Lebanon, the public is seething.

A longtime Syrian ally, Druze chieftain Walid Jumblatt, led the charge against the extension of Lahoud's term. The opposition lawmaker called the amendment "a coup d'etat against the constitution."

Four ministers have resigned, and the rest of the Cabinet is expected to step down before the end of the month.

"There's a feeling of depression," said Lebanese columnist Michael Young. "People are down. Economically, the country isn't doing well. People think this will perpetuate the stalemate. They feel marginalized."

See you in November.

MORE (via Mike Daley):
Kerry's Middle East advisor wants to reward Syria (American Thinker, September 17th, 2004)

Martin Indyk served two stints as US Ambassador to Israel during the Clinton Administration. He is one of the individuals that the Kerry campaign has identified as part of its Middle East advisory team, and many think he will return to a significant government job in the diplomatic arena, were Kerry elected. It is therefore of more than passing significance that Indyk last week argued that the Golan Heights belong to Syria, and Israel will not realize peace without surrendering it.

The Indyk statement received surprisingly little media attention. The Kerry
campaign has been struggling to maintain the traditionally large Jewish
majority for Democratic candidates in Presidential elections this year, and
the Indyk statement would certainly not be reassuring to the pro-Israel
community, the segment of the Jewish voting population that is most likely
to support President Bush in November, based on his very strong record of
support for Israel.

Then came the bombshell that the German newspaper Die Welt was reporting
that Syria had sent a chemical weapons team to Darfur in the Sudan to test
its chemical weapons capability. The "tests' succeeded apparently in killing
many black African victims, and incapacitated many others. The victims from
this attack in Darfur, and all the others in recent months, are Muslims of
course, but they are being killed because they are not Arabs. It can be
safely concluded that the Syrians and their Sudanese allies did not
distribute nor receive informed consent forms before the "tests" were
conducted.

Posted by Orrin Judd at September 18, 2004 9:40 AM