Betrayed by March 14th?

Greetings to the visitors who have been directed here by my article on The Weekly Standard's website. As luck would have it, there's a story in The Daily Star which relates directly to a point that I tried to make in the article -- student's disillusionment with the leaders of the Cedar Revolution. The stepson of George Hawi, former head of Lebanon's Communist Party, recently attacked the March 14th leaders for "betraying" their followers.

This was a point I heard repeatedly from Mai Masri, director of Beirut Diaries. The Cedar Revolution failed to live up to its promise. Mai is a liberal and an intellectual -- not someone who has any dormant sympathies for Hizbullah. If one happens to ask a taxi driver about their political views (or, more likely, they decide to inform you anyway), it's not unusual to hear rants about how the Hariri family owns the cellular phone companies in Lebanon and Sukleen, the waste collection company made up of omnipresent green-suited men.

This is undoubtedly true. For Lebanese liberals, it makes political decisions harder than they would be otherwise. Some have washed their hands of both pro- and anti-government forces, establishing the "March 11th" movement -- a third way between the March 14th (pro-government) and March 8th (anti-government) position.

Incidentally, the article on Hawi's stepson contains a wonderful example of a journalist making a point, without actually saying it. Hawi was assassinated in 2005, after abandoning his traditional Syrian allies to join the Cedar Revolution. Immediately after stating blandly that no arrests had been made in Hawi's assassination, The Daily Star reports: "Hawi joined the anti-Syrian coalition after the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in February 2005." Gee, I couldn't even begin to imagine what they're implying...