Week In Review

I apologize for neglecting my blogging duties this past week. I'm actually in the States for the holidays. I assumed that I would still be able to write regularly by checking the news online, but it's actually quite hard to stay current without talking to people every day about what they find important. That, and I'm addicted to American football.

So, let me just jot down a few notes about the intersection of American and Lebanese politics. For example, this Naharnet story about a statement from Senator Arlen Specter, and "influential U.S. Senator Patrick Kennedy" following their meeting with Syrian Foreign Minister Muallem. For starters, Patrick Kennedy is not a US Senator, but a Congressman. And frankly, he is not particularly influential. But factual nitpickings aside, the real story here is Specter and Kennedy's gullible statements that "[Assad] is ready and the Syrian public opinion is ready" for a peace deal. Neither the West or the East, of course, have a monopoly on misunderstanding the other.

Changing gears: in the "American Opinion" folder in my RSS feed, the only people ever talking about Lebanon are the folks over at National Review's The Corner. Unsurprisingly -- and I'm not complaining -- it's a fairly hawkish scene. There has been talk in Washington about the hawks losing their hold on American foreign policy, but when only one group devotes attention to a specific issue, they are generally going to get their way. Now, hawkish Giuliani advisors Martin Kramer and Stephen Rosen have started a new Middle East blog, under the auspices of Harvard University's Olin Institute for Strategic Studies. This sort of foundation-building is what moves policy in the long-term.