Joe Biden in Beirut

"Who was behind the dumb idea of sending Joe Biden to Beirut days before the Lebanese parliamentary election? Well, it looks like the brilliant idea of Jeffrey Feltman and his Zionist sponsors. Feltman all but joined the March 14 festival in Beirut when he served as an ambassador in Beirut, and when he would always show his Middle East expertise by saying "shukran" at the end of Lebanese media interviews (in English always) when his Russian, Chinese, French, and British colleagues in Beirut were conducting interviews in fluent Arabic (the Chinese ambassador at the time was a woman with a PhD in Arabic literature). I think of the quality of Richard Parker (who not only hated Bashir Gemayyel when he served as ambassador in Lebanon but was also a true Arabist--and I use that word as a compliment) and compare him to Jeffrey Feltman. What do you say about an ostensible expert on Lebanon who thinks that Nayla Mu`awwad is a true Lebanese leader? But Feltman was skilled in ingratiating himself with the neo-cons of the Bush administration before his started in 2006 to ingratiate himself with the Democratic Party through the offices of Martin Indyk. But Joe Biden is too dumb to realize how dumb it was to send him to Lebanon on the eve of the election. If the opposition wins, they will say: we won although Joe Biden visited Lebanon to boost the fortunes of March 14 and to threaten the Lebanese people that the US would "reassess" its aid to Lebanon if they vote incorrectly--he really did say that as the Lebanese press is reporting this morning. And if the opposition looses, they will say that they lost because Joe Biden blackmailed the Lebanese people. One newspaper reported that the convoy of Joe Biden was 40 cars long, and even Robert Fisk and his driver were inconvenienced. I spoke to my mother yesterday and she was furious about Joe Biden meeting with March 14 folks: she kept complaining to me how biased this was. And I could only tell her: you were the one who was enthiastic about Obama and who incorrectly assumed that US foreign policy in the Middle East would change under Obama. I reminded her that I would always tell her that the only difference is in the number of bombs dropping on people's heads in the Middle East and Afghanistan, and it looks like the number of bombs dropping on people's heads in Afghanistan has increased under Obama."

Posted by As'ad at 6:03 AM