The Syria hitlist

After all those assassinations, 6 names remain on the syrian hitlist. Here they are: Anti-Syrian Lebanese figures including Druze leader Walid Jumblatt and Telecommunications Minister Marwan Hamadeh are among six men on what a Lebanese newspaper has called a new "hit-list". Al-Balad newspaper, quoting government and parliamentary sources, on Thursday named the other alleged targets "on the hit-list of people to be killed" as deputies Wael Abu Faoor, Samir Franjieh, Elias Atallah and Farid Makari. The list was published a day after prominent anti-Syrian MP and press magnate Gibran Tueni was buried in a politically and emotionally charged funeral following his killing in a bomb blast which many blamed on Damascus. The six people named on Thursday all belong to the anti-Syrian majority in parliament which swept the polls in June, in the first election in Lebanon after Syria withdrew from the country, ending nearly 30 years of political and military domination. "It is almost the same list that surfaced before Tueni was assassinated and which also included his name," said Atallah, one of the MPs. "We will be more careful and limit our movements but this will not change our policies." I guess the reason why the Junior Harriri's name is absent from that list is due to the fact that an assassination attempt against him could seriously turn all the tables against Syria. That doesn't mean he feels safe though; he is still moving around all over the gulf states, probably out of fear of getting assassinated if he comes back to Lebanon. I am afraid of what will happen if those assassinations continue. While some people theorize that they would scare the anti-syrian critics into silence, I have a feeling that it could end up framing in the minds of most lebanese that they are at war, and that they should start acting like it. Arabs usually have this stereotype of the lebanese male of being effimenate and only after his fun or the latest fashion, but they forget that the majority of them engaged in one hell of a bloody civil war of the kind that the arab world rarely sees. They gave up fighting willingly, and most of them are against warfare from what they saw of its horrors, but it would be a mistake to think to underestimate them. Almost all oftheir political leaders are former warlords and they could all start having their militias once again, only this time united and in the form of the lebanese army. God knows Aoun especially would sign up for that plan, since it was the Syrians who exiled him. That's one itch I would bet he is dying to scratch. And the US could provide the lebanese army with all kinds of military aid to beef it up. It could be done. Two problems though: 1) How would they convince Hezbollah to get out of the way, if not join them? and 2) Do I really want to see a lebanese-syrian war? Is that the only soloution left at this point? It sure seems like it, with the Mehlis report taking this long, the option of sanctions looking more and more remote and the syrian regime insistance to continue to mess with lebanese affairs. The Lebanese may have to depend on theirselves to save Lebanon's future, even if the price is more warfare and bloodshed. sigh...