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Obama continued poor US policy towards ME countries from the outset, all beautiful words and speeches were mistaken for fundamental change. Meddling and poor picking of sides has continued tilt present day …

From a diary – Reality Check, Buying Votes in Lebanon  by Oui on June 8, 2009

    “Coming, as these elections do, in the immediate aftermath of Obama’s conciliatory Cairo speech, they seem to signify a
     cooling off of the recent tensions between the United States and the Muslim world. I don’t think this is a coincidence.”

    IMHO A bit of wishful thinking BooMan.

Foreign Money Seeks to Buy Lebanese Votes

BEIRUT, Lebanon (NY Times) April 22, 2009 — It is election season in Lebanon, and Hussein H., a jobless 24-year-old from south Beirut, is looking forward to selling his vote to the highest bidder.

“Whoever pays the most will get my vote,” he said. “I won’t accept less than $800.”

[Hariri ally] Saudi Arabia and other countries in the region are arming their allies here with campaign money in place of weapons. One adviser to the Saudi government, who added that the Saudi contribution was likely to reach hundreds of millions of dollars in a country of only four million people, said:

    “We are putting a lot into this. We’re supporting candidates running against Hezbollah, and we’re going to make Iran feel the pressure.”

Despite the vast amounts being spent, many Lebanese see the race — which pits Hezbollah and its allies against a fractious coalition of more West-friendly political groups — as almost irrelevant. Lebanon’s sectarian political structure virtually guarantees a continuation of the current “national unity” government, in which the winning coalition in the 128-seat Parliament grants the loser veto powers to preserve civil peace.

[Read original diary …]

Regional powers effect party affiliation and shifting alliances

Christian supporters of Michel Aoun said that the alliance with Mr. Hariri and his Saudi-backed March 14 group was more dangerous to Christians. “What am I going to tell you, Hezbollah is a party defending Lebanon,” said George Anid. “The Shia have simple hearts like us and they will protect us.”

Lebanon’s Shiite-Maronite Alliance of Hypocrisy

(ME Forum) Summer 2012 – Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah and leader of the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) Michel Aoun signed a memorandum of understanding on February 6, 2006, ostensibly to build a consensual Lebanese democracy on the basis of transparency, justice, and equality. However, a careful examination of the agreement shows that its real goal was the neutralization of Sunni political power, especially after the 2005 assassination of the powerful Sunni statesman and former prime minister Rafiq Hariri.

The memorandum’s allusion to limiting the influence of money on politics and combating business and bureaucratic corruption hinted at the Sunni leadership’s vast financial and entrepreneurial assets. Conversely, its insistence on the right of Lebanese expatriates to participate in the country’s elections sought to enlist the support of the mostly Christian immigrants in the Americas.

Shared Legacy of Religious Persecution

Neither Lebanon’s Shiites nor Maronites felt at home under Ottoman domination, and Sunnis relegated both communities to inferior social status. Both communities found relative freedom in their mountain enclaves although they occasionally suffered from both the excesses of regional governors who burdened them with taxes and their local feudal leaders who impoverished them and denied them education, especially in the case of the Shiites. The strong Maronite church moderated some of the adverse effects of feudal leadership, mainly because it took it upon itself to contribute to the education of the community, building numerous schools as early as the eighteenth century, especially the famous La Sagesse school in 1875. The church also played a crucial role in maintaining the cohesion of the community and preparing it for statehood. For example, Patriarch Elias Huwayik was instrumental in promoting the creation of Greater Lebanon, and in 1919, he travelled to the Versailles Peace Conference to pursue his objective.

Fits the Middle-East puzzle of the last decade of shifting regional powers, Sunni-led foreign policy as a stance against the people of Iran and its tyrannical, religious leadership. Western powers supporting religious extremism (Salafism and Wahhabism), which in turn will destruct nations like heralding a Trojan Horse.

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