Rice in Lebanon: "Hard to Digest"

Thanks to MK, and via the Century Foundation, read here

"...But having supplanted the Syrians as the dominant foreign power in Lebanese politics, the Bush administration is at risk of overplaying its own hand today. It alienated some of the most dedicated democratic reformers in Lebanese politics when it cobbled together an anti-Iranian majority in parliament from traditional political satrapies. It offended many Lebanese by its Dulles-like compulsion to see the region in strictly binary terms—and by simple-mindedly working to align Christians and Sunnis against Shiites attracted to Hizbollah..."

"...Yet most Lebanese are convinced that, as Daoud Khairallah, an analyst of the country’s byzantine politics, now at Georgetown University, wrote in Beirut’s Daily Star last week, Hizbollah’s disarmament “is more likely to be achieved by efforts of internal parties perceived as trusted friends and respected nationalists than by politically discredited adversaries.”