I mean, yesterday (or was it Wednesday? ... hate 15-hr workdays) somebody posted that letting a Russian oligarch yacht leaving a Dubai port and exiting the Strait of Hormuz showed something like hypocrisy.
Teacher of physics and astronomy here--and when teaching calculus-based physics, of a bit o' vector algebra--I looked to definitions. Russia: Foe of Iran, hence subject to Iranian love-missiles of death? "Nope." Are Dubai ports being blockaded by the US and subject to Iran-decimating non-transitability? "Nope." So what's keeping it from leaving? "But Trump said ..." Like Trump is the utter veridical truth-sayer.
Same here. Who's the ceasefire with?
The government of Lebanon.
Who does Hezbollah don the holy knee-pads of communion for? Iran.
Who's Hezbollah's CiC? Hezbollah's--not the Lebanese armed forces'. To the extent he's not deciding to swallow and remove knee pads or remove knee pads and rinse.
That's the problem when you have an honest to goodness real militia that's beholden to an external imperial power. They're the tail. Lebanon's the dog. Hezbollah doesn't even think that Lebanon should be thinking about suggesting the idea of maybe talking to the Yehud. Yet we think of Hezbollah as Lebanon.
The One problem is whether Lebanese Shi'ites think of themselves as Shi'ite Lebanese or Lebanese Shi'ites. Which "identity" is of more importance. For many wielding images like pictures of saints or Jesus held by "Christians", it's obviously the country that riled up hatred as religion, money as nationhood, and their saint worthy of worship (even if denied). After all 'ayatalloh' might mean "sign" or "miracle" of Allah. What's a 'saint'? Not that huge a diff-diff.
I'd argue, in the interests of self-determination, that Lebanon be allowed to have a ref-ref on self-determination. Which groups want to be independent, which want to be Iranian, which want to be something else. Redraw boundaries. And if, Indo-Pak or Italy-Slovene or Poland-Germany style there need to be slight adjustments, go for it. Then there'll be peace in the valley, we can live like Jack and Sally, or whatever. Then if the Iranian theologically-whipped Jew-haters want to get a 'country' involved in a war, their patch of dirt and only theirs can be pounded into bouncing Betty Rubble. And, maybe, welcomed into the welcoming arms of those that will hate them for losing and not being the right ethnic stock ... because the 'welcoming arms' will be reps of the Persian Empire redivivus.
(But of course, nobody that's a good (D) likes imperialism, much less renewed imperialism. Just ignore Iran's polemic for internal consumption for the last 20 years.)
But, please, don't treat the ceasefire between a government too weak to dispose of an armed militia loyal to a foreign state of peace and benevolence, I guess, as a ceasefire between the armed militia and its ideological/theological haters ... loyal to a foreign state. That's beneath us.
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