The victory of the Republicans in the US congressional elections earlier this month was sufficient to deliver both the Senate and the House into the hands of President George W. Bush. For the first time since the 1920s, all three legislative, executive, and judicial branches of the US government are in the hands of one party. While this bodes well for President Bush’s agenda, such as the Homeland Security Act which is expected to pass this week, the election results sent the Democrats farther to the left so as to differentiate themselves from the center now securely in the hands of a very popular George W. Bush.
What impact will this reshuffling of the American political scene have on the cause of a free and independent Lebanon when the new Congress convenes in January? There are no simple answers. Given President Bush’s pressures last summer on the House International Relations Committee to delay hearings on the Syria Accountability Act (SAA), an administration now emboldened by a Republican majority in Congress might be of concern to the pro-Patriotic movement in the Lebanese American community. Bush has now more power to impose his will on Congress. If Syria delivers to the US such favors as an anti-Iraq vote at the UN Security Council (which Syria did), would the US now have to return the favor?
We have every reason to believe that these fears are groundless, and that history will not repeat itself. The Bush Administration this time has no choice but to deliver on the side of a free and independent Lebanon, and any delays it may have tried to impose on Congress on the SAA are tactical and not strategic. The administration has clearly stated, through David Satterfield’s statement at the hearings that it concurs with the contents of the SAA, namely that Syria is a state that sponsors terrorism and that Lebanon is a victim of the Syrian occupation. The administration differed with the Congress only on the timing of the hearings, which means that it stands ready to support the SAA at a later time. It is specifically in this endorsement that the SAA has scored a major victory for Lebanon: It forced the US administration for the first time to publicly state that Syria is a terrorist state that occupies Lebanon.
Furthermore, while Bush managed to steal the center away from the democrats, he knows that he has to remain faithful to his republican base which will never forgive him if he fails to protect US interests against terrorism and defend America’s friends. The President is now on record with the American people that he will fight terrorism and those who support it. His commitments to the war on terrorism are already under intense scrutiny, and it would be political suicide on his part to renege on his pledges to fight terrorism to the death. Already we see democrats in Congress attacking him for getting side-tracked by the war on Iraq instead of focusing on the war on terrorism. Meanwhile, the Lebanese American community remains in a state of high alert to keep the spotlight on Lebanon, and will do everything in its power to pressure the US body politic to deliver on those commitments.
Throughout the dark 1990s, no one in the US administration cared to listen to the warning cries that the destruction of Lebanon was a gigantic act of terrorism, sponsored by Syria, Lybia, Iran, and other Arab states acting via proxy Palestinian, then Iranian, groups. But now that the same terrorist threat has washed ashore here, the US is more than willing to listen. The community pushed and crystallized its efforts around the SAA, the first act of Congress ever to focus uniquely on Lebanon as a victim of terrorism and foreign occupation.
Immediately after September 11, 2001, the grassroots of the Lebanese American community recognized that the US was now facing the same threat that destroyed their country of origin in the 1970s and 1980s, and therefore anticipated a shift in US foreign policy in favor of the Lebanese cause. Those in the community who kept a strong attachment to the ideals of freedom and independence as embodied by the Free Patriotic Movement and Prime Minister Michel Aoun were galvanized into action. In contrast, those in the community who had jumped on the Taef bandwagon - because making money was more important to them than principles - found themselves in the awkward position of having to defend the indefensible. That those businessmen of the American Taskforce for Lebanon (ATFL) believed, in the footsteps of Rafik Hariri and Issam Fares, that reconstructing a country and an economy could happen under the boots of the Stalinist Syrian army, remains a mystery shrouded in clouds of opportunistic mercantilism. The wealthy bullies of ATFL convinced the US administration that the forced marriage of Lebanese laissez-faire with Syrian Stalinism will somehow rebuild the country. Ten, twenty or thirty years later – depending on when you start counting – Lebanon today lingers in an existential nightmare that the resilient Lebanese people are determined to put behind them. The vital forces of the free market economy under which Lebanon prospered after its independence can only be unleashed anew when fundamental liberties and security return under the protection of the law. Investments can only come to Beirut when there is confidence in the future. As long as Lebanon remains under Syrian occupation, there will be no security, no liberties, and no trust in the future, and consequently, the nightmare will continue and genuine reconstruction will never happen.
A snapshot at the present House and Senate co-sponsors of the SAA shows a split between the two chambers, but not between the two parties. The House has 90 Republicans and 83 Democrats (total: 173), but the Senate has 24 Democrats and 21 Republicans (total: 45). Both houses together have more Republicans (111) than Democrats (107) co-sponsoring the bill. With Congress now more Republican, the SAA has greater support in principle. Keep in mind the critical factor that those Congressmen who oppose the bill now (while it is still in committee) will in all likelihood vote for it after it moves from the committees to a vote on the floor of Congress. This was the case last Spring, for example, when the so-called Arab-American members of Congress (including Ray LaHood and Darrell Issa, both of Lebanese ancestry) voted in favor of anti-Arafat and pro-Israel legislation, after fighting hard to prevent them from leaving the committees and going to a vote. In the present climate in the US, it is political suicide to vote against an anti-terror piece of legislation, and the SAA is such a bill.
Republicans are foreign affairs interventionists. Both Presidents Reagan and Bush Sr. sent troops to the Middle East (Lebanon and the Gulf War). Even if in both cases the outcome was detrimental to Lebanon on the short term, the net effect of a direct intervention by the superpower must always be seen as a harbinger of positive developments on the long term. In addition, September 11 has caused much rethinking and soul-searching in existing US foreign policy toward the Middle East. A major focus of the new American strategy for the Middle East is the democratization of its political regimes and societies since these dictatorships and autocratic regimes are clearly seen as the source of the despair that drives people into fundamentalist ideologies and terrorism. Perhaps more than the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the underlying reasons for popular anti-American feelings in the Arab street include dictatorial rule, corruption, cronyism, and the abject lack of human rights by which Arab regimes govern their peoples. The US has long colluded with these regimes, propping them up for decades to maintain stable oil prices at the expense of genuine economic and human development, human rights and political freedoms. Now the US understands that it must gain the sympathy of the Arab peoples, and not that of the regimes. With Lebanon’s long history of democracy, free press, openness to new ideas, and free-market prosperity, the country stands to quickly benefit from changes in the landscape dictated by the new American policy in the region. The republican victory in Congress will strengthen the President’s resolve to implement this policy.