President Trump continues to struggle mightily with his narrative on Lebanon, with yesterday’s visit of Prime Minister Saad Hariri leading him to loudly praise anti-ISIS and anti-al-Qaeda operations along the Syria-Lebanon border, despite those operations being primarily run by Hezbollah forces.
This was followed up with Trump dodging some fairly rudimentary questions on his position vis-a-vis Hezbollah, insisting he’d ask the experts and have an answer the next day. This gave the impression Trump isn’t really clear on what Hezbollah is, or what it’s doing.
That impression was only solidified today, when he loudly condemned Hezbollah as threatening to start a war with Israel, and lumping them in with ISIS and al-Qaeda, despite those being the groups Hezbollah is fighting against in Syria.
Trump’s presentation of Hezbollah as a “menace to the Lebanese state” further complicates the issue, as Hezbollah is actually one of the main political parties within Lebanon. Trump’s suggestion of increasing the power of the Lebanese government’s military as a way to sideline Hezbollah, one of its ruling parties then, makes little sense.
The US has long struggled with its narrative on Hezbollah, presenting them as straightforward terrorists while simultaneously coping with the reality that they’re a powerful political movement. Trump’s reaction to this remains relatively uncertain, as it’s not even all that clear he recognizes this as an issue.
The reason- the ONLY reason- Hezbollah is considered by us to be a terrorist group is because they oppose Israel. If it weren’t for that one thing, the Hez wouldn’t even be on our radar. But, since Israel calls the tune we dance the dance. It’s rather sobering to be someone else’ sock puppet, isn’t it, Mr President?
Thats a big part of it, but the actual reason why Israel and the US are so much more hostile to groups like Hezbollah or Muslim Brotherhood is because they have serious & sophisticated political dimensions as well as experience & skill in administration and delivering services. Conversely ISIS, AQ and other ‘black flag” groups are only good at terrorist recruitment and attacks but fail miserably whenever they have a territory to control. That makes them much more formidable in the long run.
And Hezbollah in particular being almost exclusively focused on immediate regional issues and not really concerned with any global Islamist ambitions or causes, it doesn’t shoot itself in the foot and make enemies all over the world so they’re much harder to paint as boogeyman to go to war against.
I’m disappointed with Trump but he is a product of the misinformation campaign pumped through the U.S. MSM. They routinely call Hezbollah an Iranian backed terrorist group. This is a false summary. Hezbollah is a native Lebanese militia.
Morons like Rubio met with the Sunni Prime Minister of Lebanon (a position constitutionally reserved for a Sunni) to discuss how to rid Lebanon of Hezbollah. What are you going to do, send the Lebanese Shiites to the gas chambers?
“with yesterday’s visit of Prime Minister Saad Hariri leading him to loudly praise anti-ISIS and anti-al-Qaeda operations along the Syria-Lebanon border, despite those operations being primarily run by Hezbollah forces.”
The Lebanese national army is also running those operations. It depends on which part of the border is discussed. They do not overlap each other, the Lebanese Army and Hezbollah staying clear of each other.
Hezbollah has developed into a non-sectarian popular militia (Many Christians and Sunni’s are fellow travelers.) akin to the Black Panther Party of the Sixties and Seventies. I don’t support all of their tactics but I absolutely support their cause and if Trump were truly apposed to terrorism, be it from ISIS or Israel, he would too.