Putin in Ukraine = Assad in Lebanon Pt 2

... Continues Pt 1

What Vladimir Putin is doing to Ukraine today is exactly what Syria did to Lebanon between the early 1970s and 2005. There already were tensions between the Lebanese and the Palestine Liberation Organization of Yasser Arafat who had moved his headquarters from Amman to Beirut after King Hussein of Jordan had massacred the Palestinians in September 1970. Arab pressure had also forced the Lebanese to concede south Lebanon to the Palestinians so they could conduct their resistance against Israel, which obviously brought retaliation by Israel against Lebanese villages along the border. Beginning those early years of the 1970s, a couple of years after the coup that brought the Assads to power, Syria began sending its mercenaries across the border to carry out terrorist attacks against Lebanese Army positions and massacres against civilian villages. A convergence of interests between the Syrians and the Palestinians was a lead-up to the war that erupted in 1975, pitting the Lebanese government and Lebanese nationalist groups against the Syrian-Palestinian-Communist coalition.

During the 1975 - 2005, Syrian troops gradually conquered Lebanese territory, stepping in after each ceasefire as a "peacekeeping" force to separate the Lebanese Resistance from Syria's own proxy militias. At one point, Syrian forces were called the Arab Deterrence Force. In essence, the Assad regime would create a problem via its proxies, claim deniability, then be tasked by a colluding or stupid West to resolve the problem. The arsonist-fireman. In 1977, Syrian troops went in officially for the first time, but did not deploy everywhere. Then in 1984, after Syria's proxy Hezbollah began bombing embassies and western peacekeeping forces, assassinating western diplomats, clergymen, teachers, and journalists, Lebanon was voided of any Western presence and the Syrian army took complete control of the capital Beirut. Finally, in 1988 and again with Western collusion or stupidity, the Syrians wanted to impose a puppet president (just like Putin is doing today in Ukraine), but the Lebanese refused. The US envoy to Beirut, Richard Murphy, whose 243 Marines had been blown to shreds by Syria a mere five years ago in 1983, made a deal with Assad to impose a puppet president, Mikhail Daher, which the Lebanese were to either accept "or else you'll get chaos". The George Bush Sr. Administration back then was licking Assad's behind because his proxies in Beirut were holding dozens of US hostages. The Lebanese refused and chose chaos rather be cowered by the Syrian-American collusion. It all climaxed in 1990, when the Syrian Air Force was allowed to fly its jets over Lebanon (in a temporary suspension of a Syrian-Israeli agreement that only Israeli jets but no Syrian fighter jets could), bomb the Lebanese presidential palace and dislodge the last resistor to Syria's hegemony. Lebanon fell under a complete Syrian occupation of 90% of its territory, while Israel controlled 10% along the southern border. Lebanon fell under a Syrian Gulag, not unlike the Soviet Gulags of Putin, thanks no less to a US Republican administration willing to cozy up to a dictator killer of Americans. 

From the early 1970s through 2005 during the long Syrian occupation, tens of thousands of Lebanese, Palestinian and Syrian dissidents, journalists, politicians, and ordinary citizens were killed or taken to prisons inside Syria where they were never heard from. After 1990, when all resistance to Syria was crushed, a Lebanese puppet regime was installed to the satisfaction of the US and the West. Syria began a program of Syrianizing the Lebanese administration by creating several security agencies, forcing Lebanon to sign several treaties with titles like "Brotherhood and Cooperation" in which Lebanon surrendered much of its decision-making, and implementing corrupt practices with which pro-Syrian politicians enriched themselves via kickbacks and grand theft. For instance, Syrian ally Nabih Berri became Speaker of Parliament and was entrusted with the Fund of the Displaced, which he promptly stole and built up his personal fortune. Pro-Syrian Walid Jumblatt was entrusted with a fund to assist the return of the Christians whom his militia had massacred and evicted from their villages in the Shouf Mountains. We learn today that Jumblatt has absconded with some of those monies which he promptly wired outside the country once the Lebanese currency collapsed a couple of years ago. Rafik Kariri, who is made today to be a "martyr" after he was assassinated by the Syrians and Hezbollah, was propped up as a Prime Minister under the Syrian occupation beginning in 1991. Like a fool, he splurged his fortune on refurbishing a few downtown buildings, thinking he could re-launch the country's economy under the Syrian boots. He endorsed Hezbollah's existence as the only militia not to disarm after the war and accepted to be treated like a puppet by the Syrians.

Change happened after September 11, 2001. The dumb Americans realized that catering to despots and tyrants was not protecting them. Somehow the murder of 243 US marines in October 1983 and the bombing of the US Embassy were not enough of a wake-up call. And so, the Americans instructed Hariri to turn against Syria and Hezbollah, which he promptly did in 2004, only to be blown to shreds by a Syrian-Hezbollah bomb in downtown Beirut in February 2005. By April of that year the Syrian army was evicted from the country. Unfortunately its nefarious influence persists to this day.

In conclusion, Putin is doing to Ukraine what Syria has done, and continues to do, to Lebanon. Undermining it with puppet regimes has not worked, as the Ukrainians shrugged them off in their Orange Revolution of 2004-2005. Putin cannot accept a Ukraine that is not subservient to his autocratic regime, just as Assad cannot accept a Lebanon free of the Baath regime's diktat. Just as Ukraine is a source of resources to be pilfered by Moscow, Lebanon is a fountain of resources for the criminals in Damascus. I fear, though, for the Ukrainians from Western duplicity. Think about it. Unless the West invades Russia and takes Moscow to install a friendly government there, or unless the Russian regime implodes from within, there is no way to stop the Russian butchery in Ukraine except by a nuclear conflict or by making a deal with Putin. Does anyone ask why the Assad regime has managed to survive 53 years when it scuttled every peace opportunity; was listed on the US list of State-Sponsors of terrorism while US Secretaries of State year after year met with Assad himself in Geneva; bombed and massacred hundreds of thousands in Lebanon and Syria; committed the gravest crimes against humanity and war crimes; and yet, the West is today talking about reengaging with Assad, rehabilitating him, and giving him free rein over Lebanon, again, if a nuclear deal with Iran is achieved?

If pathetic and weak Assad has managed to f...k the Middle East and the West for more than 50 decades and remains a valid "cunning", "savvy" interlocutor who "kept his part of a deal" as many US pundits used to say about the tyrant butcher, just as imbecile Donald Trump is saying about Putin, what is the West to do with Putin other than make a deal him over a destroyed annihilated Ukraine, given the stakes? Especially if the American people, in their Republican ignorance, decided to bring Donald Trump back to the White House in 2024.