Short Stories, Long Odds

A considerable percentage of my research at University this semester centered around Lebanon. In late March / early April, some colleagues of mine and I prepared a think tank style position paper on how we would go about “fixing Lebanon,” especially focusing on the problems of Hezbollah and Syrian occupation, and human rights abuses. We were surprised by the Cedar Revolution and many of us were convinced Syria wasn’t going to play ball. Syria later surprised us even more by actually withdrawing.

After the jump, you’ll find my position paper and proposed fixes for Lebanon.

Historical
Historically, Lebanon has been rife with problems. These problems contribute to the human rights abuses perpetrated in Lebanon today; more specifically, the structure of life in Lebanon has contributed to the culture in which these human rights abuses occur.

Lebanon has been involved in some sort of military conflict ever since the end of World War II. A cultural center of the Near East before the conflict, the Israeli / Palestinian conflict landed on its doorstep in the form of Palestinian refugees. They came in waves, both after the Arab-Israeli Conflict of 1948, the Arab-Israeli War of 1968, Black September, and numbered more than 300,000 by 1975, under the leadership of Yasser Arafat and the PLO. A civil war broke out between Maronite Christian militias and the Palestinian refugees in 1975, and Syria seized the opportunity to occupy Lebanon by sending 40,000 of its own troops to ensure that Lebanon would not be overrun by Palestinians. The irony of Ba’athist Syrians fighting Palestinians in a Lebanese land grab merits mention – normally these two would be on the same side. The Maronites began to suspect that Syria was tending only to its own interests and they began fighting in early 1978.

They eventually ended up more or less on the same side when cross-border attacks against Israel lead to the first of several Israeli invasions in March of 1978. Consider that Lebanon’s government had been weakened to a state of total ineffectiveness by the civil war, was then occupied by Syria, and then was later invaded by Israel several times with the intention of evicting the PLO, who continued to use southern Lebanon (and at time, on into Beirut) as center for anti-Israel operations. Lebanon was a mess for more or less the rest of the 20th century.

America became heavily involved in Lebanon during its mediation of the PLO withdrawal from Lebanon in 1982, and during the 80’s chaos reigned – militant anti-American forces (including Hezbollah, the remnants of Amal, and the PLO) carried out unchecked terrorist attacks against American targets.

The weakening of the PLO’s presence in Lebanon and the UN’s involvement brought about the unilateral withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon in 2000. This did not, however, fix the damage to Lebanon’s political and governmental infrastructures done by decades of civil war and armed guerilla conflict. The international community’s inability to do more than write tersely worded letters to Syria has predictably resulted in Syria still maintaining occupation of Lebanon. All Syrian troops are supposed to be out of Lebanon by April 30th, and the sectarian discord in Lebanon may increase or lapse back into violence if the deadline isn’t adhered to.

International / Political

Most of the countries and groups involved in Lebanon’s troubles have little claim to their positions, and all of the countries and groups that should be seriously involved in fixing Lebanon are inactive.

Hezbollah is funded by anti-Israeli militants in Syria and Iran. Despite its claims to legitimacy in the Arab polity, Hezbollah is regularly involved in clandestine terrorist operations against Israel, political or sectarian opponents within Lebanon, and against the United States. The EU has officially classified them as a terrorist group and while the UN has called for the group to disband in SR 1559 though it has yet to officially denote Hezbollah as a terrorist group, something which the UN is normally in the business of doing. Hezbollah is clearly a proxy for Iran and Syria’s anti-Israel operations.

The reticence of the international community to condemn and attack Hezbollah is mostly intertwined with a fear of offending Syria – notably, the United States had a rather rosy relationship with Syria throughout the Clinton administration and the current Bush administration. The political motivations for Bush’s sudden turn against Syrian occupation are legion, prime among them the Cedar Revolution – it is difficult to be the Freedom President and not support a sovereign nation’s cry for independence from foreign occupiers. Had the Cedar Revolution not occurred, the Bush Administration would have maintained its previous stance towards Syria, one of inclusion and gratitude for Syria’s support in the Iraq war.

Human Rights Abuses

The unstable, decentralized governmental structure of Lebanon fosters a culture in Lebanon that lends itself to human rights abuses. The Lebanese Armed Forces and Syrian intelligence agencies regularly detain citizens incommunicado, torture prisoners, and arrest persons who are critical of government policies or Syrian occupation. Several murders and disappearances go uninvestigated every year. The CIA and international organizations report that the courts are highly susceptible to political pressure from pro-Syrian actors, and so Lebanon still lacks an independent judiciary. Government forces regular restrict freedom of movement, speech, and the press. Sectarian conflicts between the citizenry and government agents (especially Syrian intelligence agents) are common; several crimes reported in the CIA’s human rights abuse report in the last two years have been both perpetrated by government agents and religiously targeted.


Lebanon’s current constitution does not specifically prohibit torture, and the government admits that detainees are physically tortured (beatings, electric shock, suspended by the wrists with the hand bound behind the back, mock executions) and psychologically tortured (families being threatened, prisoners being forced to assume postures that are culturally denoted as humiliating). The sufferers of the most serious abuses are regularly aligned with opposition political groups. Women are regularly abused, and the countries prisons fail to meet even the lowest international standards. Hezbollah and the Ministry of Defense continue to deny access to their prisons and detainees to international human rights organizations, and the government does nothing to force them to cooperate. The government, when under pressure from NGOs, will issue statements and resolutions for transparency and access in Lebanon’s correction facilities to commence, which the rest of the government applauds and then immediately ignores. The Parliamentary Commission on Human Rights estimates that only around 33% of prisoners being held by the Government had been charged with a crime. Syrian and Lebanese intelligence officers also often intervene in the judiciary process on behalf of their supporters or agents and protect them from prosecution.

Any and all pro-Israeli, anti-Syrian militia members that either surrendered or were captured after the Israeli Defense Forces withdrawal in 2000 are still being held without charge, although recently they have been allowed access to lawyers and their families. Palestinian refugees are persecuted by everyone, even rival Palestinians. Arbitrary methods of manipulation are used to turn Palestinian refugees against one another – the CIA lists that in certain refugee camps, Palestinians are not allowed to bring in construction materials to repair their houses. Syrian and Lebanese government agents regularly use restrictions such as these as leverage for pressuring refugees to act as informants.



Lists of human rights abuses (as well as the Shia Syrian governments favor of executions) could fill a volume. Lebanon isn’t the worst place in the world to go to jail, but it is pretty bad.

Families / Women / Children

The Lebanese government makes some effort to provide legislatively for the safety of children, child workers, against discrimination against women, the rights of women, and against human trafficking. However, the usual problem persists – while there are laws providing for these considerations they are not regularly enforced. There are also a notable lack of laws specifically prohibiting human trafficking, slavery, or domestic violence. In many cases, a battered woman is legally forced to return to her abusive husband.

Culturally, women have the same problems they do in many Middle Eastern countries, in that they are regularly forced to exist under male hegemony, not just from their husbands but also from any and all male relatives. Many women stay in abusive relationships for cultural reasons, because they buckle to societal pressure, or they fear losing custody of their child or the ability to support them.

Education and the life of the average Lebanese child is a growing concern for the government, but education has failed to become a priority.


The effect on a family of Lebanese citizens is generational and inexorable – all members of the family will have developed in significantly militant, unstable environment, and the effect will be particularly strong upon a family that practices a minority religion or adheres to a different political creed than the rest of their community. Children will no doubt develop with a stunted community or civil sense because they are constantly forced to identify under duress with a national or regional creed which fundamentally differs from either what is practiced in their homes or by someone they know. Political and societal pressures to swing pro-Syria / Shia have been strong in most parts of Lebanon for decades, and the psyche of the developing child (as well as the developing family unit) eventually becomes inextricable from the societal need to meet muster on the ideological front.

The gradual exodus of Christians from Lebanon is a good indicator of the inability of Syria’s current societal structure to support ideological diversity. The government, politics, business, and society in Lebanon have been canted in one direction for a long time, and it takes a long time for a societal imperative to cycle generationally out of a familial construct. Because of this as well as Lebanon’s poor economy and its inability to advance beyond the cursory stages of a developing country will continue to engender unsafe child labor, human trafficking, and the marginalization of the women in Lebanese society. The Government’s defined lack of political will is the largest contributor to this problem.

Solution
In order for Lebanon to be “fixed”, as it were, a lot of housecleaning must be done. Syria must withdraw completely, and Hezbollah must be disarmed and run out of town. A Syrian withdrawal paired with Hezbollah maintenance of arms and position equates to a Syrian reduction of forces. I would argue that Hezbollah is more effective than the Syrian military at furthering Syrian and Iranian interests in Lebanon anyways.



So, the UN and, preferably, the United States and the EU must oversee the withdrawal of Syria and at least the disarming of Hezbollah. Then, the whole governmental infrastructure needs to be recycled.

First, the “government”, being the executive branch, must resign. Along with them, the legislature must also resign. Then, concurring with the hot new fad of Democracy International On The March, full and free elections must be held, under the watchful of Transparency International and the UN.

Once the old government has been exchanged for a new, democratically elected government under the old system, it would fall upon the executive to direct policy towards updating Lebanon’s constitution and penal codes. Then the judiciary must be recycled in a staggered fashion until it has been entirely replaced.

The military and intelligence agencies represent a problem, especially with pro-Syrian agents occupying all of the highest levels of command. So, all commissioned officers and administrators (and their equivalents) must either be shifted or retired. It’s a great idea, because everyone on the bottom gets a promotion!

By recycling the government after Syria and Hezbollah are officially removed from the equation, Syria and Hezbollah will be almost totally removed from the equation. The influence of those two groups upon Lebanese government has resulted in the lack of political will from which most of Lebanon’s problems spring. The human rights abuse problem in Lebanon is institutionalized, with abuses either being openly committed by government actors or independently, free of government care or regulation. What I have proposed is a method of removing the problem elements – the bad apples, if you will – without violence or infrastructural upheaval.

This is not the best time to talk about the economy – there are many other more exciting things to talk about. But, after reading an op-ed in the New York Times by former Secretary of Treasury Robert Rubin, something occurred to me. In it, he talks about the danger of the growing deficits and what that could mean for American products on the open world market, the dollar, and the American economy in general. What occurred to me is that, to supply-siders, it may be in their best interest to trash the joint before they leave.

Let me offer some brief definitions, so you’re hip to what I’m rapping about:

Supply-Side economics: A set of macroeconomic theories in which taxes are cut, and businesses are given government incentives. Supply-siders think this encourages economic growth, that businesses and workers will use the money they save on taxes to “create new businesses and expand old businesses, which in turn will increase productivity, employment, and general well-being.” Literally, the supply is increased, and the demand should follow suit.

Keynesianism: An economic theory developed by John Maynard Keynes during the 1930’s. Stressing demand, Keynes believed that general trends can overwhelm the behavior of the individual. Rather than an economy based around production and output, Keynes “asserted the importance of the aggregate demand for goods as the driving factor, especially in downturns.”


So long story short, supply-siders believe in supply as the driving economic force, Keynesians believe in demand. Specific to government, both believe in attempts to manage the economy – Keynes preached a counter-cyclical method of deficit spending to stop a recession and saving to stop inflation; Supply-siders engage in price control, where supply is increased through tax cuts (and not to mention some deficit spending) which causes prices to fall and competition to rise. Also, to a supply-sider, taxes are always bad because they decrease market demand for goods and slow investment.

I know by now you are asking “Josh, why the hell should I care about this?” That’s exactly the point.

Republicans have a long history of cutting taxes and claiming smart economic policy as the driving force. We all remember when Bush sent everyone a check for $300 to stimulate the economy. Bush, as a supply-sider, was only encouraging us to do what we should have been doing in the first place: buying up the overamped supply. Supply-siders believe that demand is just a secondary, reactionary function to supply, and that the status quo is a normalization in which demand is always increasing to meet the ever increasing supply.

A current problem (and one we saw during Reagan’s administration) is that taxes are being cut AND more money is being spent by the government. Tax cuts usually fight recession, because they increase demand; deficit spending usually fights recession, too. The demand, theoretically, should be ever spiraling upward in order to meet an increased supply, caused both by tax cuts (here, to business) and government spending.

The problem with huge government deficits is a simple one – eventually a government has so many years in which it has taken in less money than it spent, the investments in the government itself (bonds, t-bills, etc) begin to be devalued. This devalues the dollar. There’s also the logistical problem of money supply – the United States government can spend itself into a hole for quite a long while, but eventually you run out of room, as happened to several large countries during the Great Depression. Long before it causes a depression, though, it causes prices to rise against the weakened dollar, which decreases the buying power of most regular citizens. This is the sort of short-term, price-driven inflation that can quickly spiral out of control: the goods don’t actually cost anymore to buy than they did six months ago in real money terms, but you’re still making the same amount of dollars at Kinko’s every week even though they can now buy fewer goods.

If you’ve come with me this far and haven’t switched over to The Onion or gotten a nosebleed, here’s my relevant theory: I believe that politicians can use economic theory to serve political ends (which is no great surprise to anyone) but I think Republicans may be doing it at the expense of the economic stability of the United States. Supply-siders have no problem with large deficits as a rule – to them a deficit is part of the fix. The difference between Keynesians and supply-siders is the size and duration of an acceptable deficit, whereas Keynesians believe that the occasional deficit is a healthy part of economic cycle, to supply-siders it is the preferred state. Observe Reagan and his tax cuts and ever-expanding discretionary budget. Sure, money was cheap and you could get a checking account that earned 8% interest, but Clinton had to spend almost his entire first term fixing the budget and heading off imminent disaster. Things would have looked a lot different in Clinton’s second term if technology hadn’t blown up the way it did.

So, if all of this applies, it is to the Republican advantage to destroy the economy while in control. Many hardcore supply-siders are also social program fiscal conservatives, and supply-siders have admitted that one of the goals of a large deficit is to force government to reduce itself in size by cutting unnecessary programs.

In other words, “I’m going to create a gap so big, the guy after me will be forced to deal with it for his entire first term, and he won’t be able to do so without identifying and protecting programs essential to the operation and function of basic government.”

This is politically brilliant and a real service to your party if you manage to pull it off – your agenda and values are projected onto the national structure by default long after your administration was all like “We out.” As soon as they lose power, the Neo-GOP can point the finger and say “Look at those tax-and-spend Democrats!” The problem is that people who try to feed their families on $20,000 a year, the people who hit the mall with a vengeance when they get their tax cut checks and are enraged when “the goddamn Democrats raise their taxes,” cannot possibly see that a supply-side and deficit-weakened dollar is the culprit of origin.

John Bolton’s nomination for US Ambassador to the UN has been sent to the floor WITHOUT RECOMMENDATION in a party-line vote of 10-8 by the Senate Foreign Relations committee.

Well! Tacked on to a war-spending bill no one in their right mind would be able to vote against, the Senate passed the unfunded, National ID mandate 100-0. I called it wrong. I said that it would have serious trouble as an amendment in the Senate.

If this doesn’t freak you out, the distance between you and the dork who says ‘This will be the best prom ever’ just got a little shorter.

Not too long ago, Diana and I were idly listening to the news in the morning like we usually do, when something caught our attention – a story about a bill passing through the Texas state house concerning sexy cheerleading.

Rep. Al Edwards, a man who is certainly doing his part to embarass the living shit out of Texas Democrats, put the bill forth for consideration. This is the body I’m considering running for?

“People are calling and telling me how disgusting it is to see sexually suggestive routines on the part of marching units or cheerleaders,” said State Rep. Al Edwards, a Houston Democrat who sponsored the bill.

He complained of cheerleaders “shaking their behinds, breaking it down,” but the proposal does not define what constitutes suggestive cheering.

Ah ha, there’s some legislative genius for you. The critics of this bill say it is unenforcable because what is offensive is not clearly defined. Those of us who understand how legislation works, however, understand that this bill will infuse the citizens of small Texas towns with power – the exact kind of power that the men who go to the churches where the women can’t even wear fucking pants need to have! This is the power of broad interpretation of state law, where they may write tersely-worded letters to school districts (which they already do, about everything you can imagine), but now they can get Boss Hogg on the horn and down to the school to check it out! I love how they spend taxpayer money! It isn’t like we have any other problems in education!

This still has to pass the State Senate, but I somehow doubt it will have a problem with that.


The real problem with cheerleaders has nothing to do with their routines. Honestly, no matter how sexy they try to act while clapping or jumping around, it isn’t very sexy. It wasn’t sexy in the 90’s when I was bumping around high school and it isn’t sexy now. Routines aren’t the problem.

You wanna know what the problem is? The outfits. That’s the problem.

As a teenaged boy observing cheerleaders, the routines did nothing for me. The tiny skirts and plainly visible squirrel covers were FAR MORE DISTRACTING than any of the spastic seizures the girls went through. In fact, by the bill’s standards (which I can only infer or extrapolate), the most “sexy” moves are the least troubling. By far, the unsexy moves are the most suggestive, and include but are not limited to all of the classic cheerleader moves which display the bendy properties of young ladies.

A point Diana brought up reinforces what I have to say – many high schools in Texas have moderate dress codes. I wasn’t required to wear slacks or a tie, and girls could wear pants or skirts, everyone could wear t-shirts, etc. The main rule in the handbook stated that most sensible clothing was fine, SO LONG AS IT WASN’T DISTRACTING.

There were, however, some rules. You had to tuck in your shirt, for one. As a girl, there were some basic length requirements for skirts. People were regularly disciplined for not tucking in whatever you had on the top half of your body, and girls were sent home often for skirt length. Diana’s argument is this: if I have to do something retarded like tuck a tunic into a skirt (or something similarly ridiculous), why do the cheerleaders get to run around the halls wearing skirts that don’t even attempt to cover their asses?

If a girl were not a cheerleader (or a member of socially comparable construct du` pep) and she wore something of design similar to a cheerleading outfit, what would you call her?


Well, you’d probably call her Trixy, ask her if she’s a cop, and invite her to get in the car. Then you’d swing by the ATM.

Here’s my query – if the routines are too sexy, then aren’t asses in the air are also clearly too sexy? I’m going to call Al Edwards’ and also my State Senator, Craig Estes, and demand that young ladies’ asses be covered while the young men of Texas attempt to learn their maths.