The West Has Abandoned Lebanon Leaving It For Syria

I cannot encourage you enough to read the full article on Lebanon here from Middle East Times.
This article is spot on and brings back through the recent history of Lebanon and how the West has blown it - how the U.S. and Europe have basically abandoned Lebanon and left the door wide open for the Syrians to continue to take control of it.
It wasn't that long ago that the West caught a break when the Syrians were basically forced by world opinion to vacate their occupation of Lebanon. Well, the Syrians never really totally walk away from anything, just ask the Israelis about the Golan Heights. What the West has also done is abandon Israel in all of this. With Syrian influence and control in Lebanon, it gives Hezbollah immediate resources and free reign to complicate the border with Israel. What would the Israelis have faced in Lebanon after the soldier abduction if Lebanon had been full of Syrian troops and tanks? And Syrian anti-tank batteries?
It's not too late for the West to get back into the game - the best place to start is to push forward the international trials concerning the assassination of the numerous Lebanese government officials. Syria is guilty and needs to be held accountable.

Save Lebanon from Syria and Iran
By OLIVIER GUITTA (Middle East Times)
Published: February 04, 2008

Indeed after the momentum of the spring 2005 revolution, it really looks like the West has given up on Lebanon and left the anti-Syrian forces in the mud. This trend has been quite clear in the past few months. Even after 29 terror attacks (since October 2004), targeting anti-Syrian personalities (mostly journalists and politicians), believed by many analysts to have been ordered by Damascus, the West is giving a free pass to the regime of Bashar Assad.
All the more mind-boggling is that recently Western targets have been victims of Syria's terror policy, according to some intelligence analysts. UNIFIL forces stationed in Lebanon have been murdered and on Jan. 15, a U.S. embassy vehicle was targeted. One would think that the West would react accordingly to attacks on its citizens, by retaliating with force or diplomacy. But nothing....

History should have taught Nancy Pelosi and Western European powers that engaging a regime like Assad's does not work; on the contrary it actually emboldens it. Therefore, Syria is now adopting an even tougher stance. Assad can be really satisfied with his strategy: he did not concede anything; he publicly humiliated France; he showed that he was a key partner and he broke out of isolation.
After this debacle, Sarkozy recognized that it was no use speaking to the Syrians. It is quite possible that the idea behind this opening to Syria – offering Damascus a chance to reintegrate into the international community – was to break the Syrian-Iranian alliance and isolate Tehran even more. But this was a doomed policy.
And as Lebanese MP Elias Atallah, an expert on Syria, recently told Libération newspaper: "Our long experience shows that, each time friendly countries try to open up to Damascus, this ends up having a negative impact on Lebanon. In reality, the relations between the Syrian and Iranian regimes are very deep. They have been allied since 1982. Whoever thinks that he can change Syria's role is simplistic. Iran and Syria can totally live with their differences. They are minimal."