".... But I wanted to see the woman who in 1996, when asked by CBS News if the price of half-a-million dead Iraqi children was worth the sanctions against Saddam Hussein, infamously replied: "We think the price is worth it." She was US ambassador to the United Nations at the time. I had actually seen her before – she was lying on a hotel couch in London after prolonged and hopeless negotiations with a certain Bibi Netanyahu – but she was asleep at the time so I suppose that doesn't count....
And among the problems she spotted – of course – was that "one of the political contestants maintains a major armed force not under the control of the state". Well, we all guessed the Hizbollah would end up in the dog house for that very reason, even though Albright was sharp enough to realise that "other parties also possess arms of various sizes and capabilities".
The catch, of course, is that if the Hizbollah and its running mates – they include the crackpot General Michel Aoun who has successfully split the Christian Maronites by posing as Syria's and Iran's new best friend – pick up a majority of the vote, America will have to talk to a "Hizbollah-led" government in Lebanon. Or will refuse to do so as the case may be....
The best bet is that the country's ex-military president, Michel Sleiman, will fashion a centrist bloc from the bits and pieces of the election that will prevent either the Hizbollah or Hariri's lads from taking power. Be that as it may, Lebanon will be back to the same old parliamentary shouting shop it had before. In Beirut, it's parliamentary democracy along the lines of the French Third Republic.... This was the same Europe that built Lebanon – which is why this terribly divided country remains locked into a parliamentary system that Europe had long ago abandoned. And – given the fact that an all-powerful president could never run a sectarian state – it will remain so.
Nevertheless, the Hizbollah issue won't go away any more than Hamas is going to slide out of sight in Gaza. Barack Obama might not be too worried if it does slip into power – since his envoys are clocking up frequent flyer miles to and from Damascus, they might be in a better position to influence the Hizbollah's Syrian allies.
But don't be too sure. One of the big mistakes of the Bush era was to demand democracy for the Palestinians and to approve of fair elections before realising that Hamas would win. And once the Palestinians had achieved that astonishing result, they had to be punished for it. (It was, I recall, the Ottawa Citizen which announced that the Palestinians should be "threatened with fresh elections".)
But most of my Lebanese colleagues, listening to Mrs Albright, came away with a deep suspicion: that if the Lebanese elections bring the friendly "democrats" back to power, the National Democratic Institute and its other poll-sniffers will announce a fair and free election. But if the Hizbollah and their allies move into power, it will suddenly be discovered that the Lebanese poll was "deeply flawed". And then, I suppose, we would all be "threatened with fresh elections". The price, I am sure, will be worth it."
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