Are U.S. Officials Understanding and Responding to Middle East Crises? Ya Think?

Barry Rubin
The Rubin Report
27 October '10

If you've lost faith in the current administration's ability and mass media's ability to respond to Middle East developments, here's more evidence. There's a relatively new American idiomatic expression, "Ya [you] think?" Said sarcastically, it means: Wow, duh, the answer to that question is really obvious!

So consider how hidden, obscure stories [sarcasm] are being dug out by policymakers and top media. The New York Times reports that the U.S. government is "increasingly alarmed by unrest in Lebanon, whose own fragile peace is being threatened by militant opponents of a politically charged investigation into the killing in 2005 of a former Lebanese leader."

Ya think? Lebanon has been taken over (or recaptured, if you wish) by the Iran-Syria anti-American, revolutionary Islamist, terrorist-sponsoring axis, operating largely--though by no means completely--through their client, Hizballah. Might this be of some concern for U.S. policymakers?

Four years ago, Lebanon was run by an independent-minded, pro-Western government that would have preferred peace with Israel (though knew that was impossible), opposed Iran, and saw radical Islamism as its antagonist. Today, Lebanon has been "lost" in large part through Western (don't forget France's responsibility) weakness and inaction.

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