In the 1980s, I loved the British music of the decade. I’m reminded now of a song, The Lebanon, by a synthpop band called The Human League:
Now he finds he is at war
Weren’t we supposed to keep the peace”And who will have won
When the soldiers have gone
From the Lebanon
The Lebanon
The Lebanon
From the Lebanon
In 1984 when that song was written, they were talking about the Syrians, who had been in the tiny country since 1976. (In August of 1973, then-Syrian dictator Hafez al-Assad declared that Syria and Lebanon were one country, much like then-Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein declared of his country and Kuwait some seventeen-years later.)
Lebanon’s pro-Damascus Prime Minister Omar Karami told the country’s parliament that he quit, prior to a parliamentary vote-of-confidence. Pro-Damascus Syrian President Emile Lahoud must now pick a new prime minister to select a new government, and it might be that Lahoud’s puppet-masters will be watched too closely to pull the strings.
Opposition leader Camille Chamoun: “The Syrian occupation forces and their security systems have to go back to Syria.
Things have changed since the Human League recorded their song, which is most certainly not a meaningful, intellectual examination of the travails of 1980s Lebanon, vis-à-vis the Syrian occupation. (The Taif Agreement had not yet been signed.) The two most important changes were the result of Republican Presidents in Washington.
The first, Syria is no longer a Soviet Puppet. I’ve heard Middle East experts aver that Bashar al-Assad does not even run Syria, with the power belonging to his deceased father’s agents in the military.
The second is that freedom and democracy, once unimaginable to the Lebanese, are now very obviously attainable and within reach.
Things are working out so far.
