Lebanon sends army to remove Hezballah

AP/MSNBC:

Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora on Saturday ordered the army to restore law and order across the country and remove gunmen from the streets.

Saniora said Lebanese government can no longer accept that militant group Hezbollah freely hold on to its weapons.

In his first public remarks since fighting began on Wednesday, Saniora accused Hezbollah of carrying out an "armed coup" against Lebanese democracy.

Saniora is holed up at his government headquarters protected by Lebanese troops after Hezbollah and its allies swept through the Muslim sector of the capital after sectarian clashes.

His comments came as a Shiite shop owner opened fire on a funeral procession Saturday in a Sunni neighborhood of Beirut, killing two and wounding six.

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It is not clear what he was waiting for. It could be he was lining up support from the Sunni Arab states who oppose the Iranian back Hezballah coup attempt. I think Iran is desperate to have a distraction from the loss their Iraq proxies are having right now. They have already lost in Basra and are losing badly in Baghdad where some have laid down their weapons.

Lebanon can expect support from the US, Europe and the Sunni states. Whether its small army is up to the task of removing the Hezzies is another matter. One thing the Lebanese probably have going for them is that Hezballah would be reluctant to use its main rocket arsenal that it has aimed at Israel.

Beirut to the Beltway ridicules Obama's suggestion that it was time for negotiations with the Hezzies.

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Oh the time we wasted by fighting Hizbullah all those years with rockets, invasions of their homes and shutting down their media outlets. If only we had engaged them and their masters in diplomacy, instead of just sitting with them around discussion tables, welcoming them into our parliament, and letting them veto cabinet decisions. If only Obama had shared his wisdom with us before, back when he was rallying with some of our former friends at pro-Palestinian rallies in Chicago. How stupid we were when, instead of developing national consensus with them, we organized media campaigns against Israel on behalf of the impoverished people who voted for them.

During that time when we bought into the cause against Israel, treating resistance fighters like our brothers, we really should have been building consensus with them. Because what we did back in 1982, 1993, 1996, 2000 and 2006 – all that was plain betrayal and unnecessary antagonism, a product of a corrupt patronage system and unfair distribution of wealth.

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You get the feeling he knows more about the facts on the ground than Obama does. It is just another indication that Obama is running for Jimmy Carter's second term. While Obama has indicated that he would not negotiate with the Hamas death cult, he apparently has no difficulty in doing so with the Hezballah death cult. The thing that both death cults have in common is that they are proxies of Iran whom he will negotiate with.

The NY Times reports that Hezballah is withdrawing its forces at this time. I don't think it is a coincidence that the withdrawal followed the cease fire deal Sadr's forces agreed to in Baghdad.