Western Left to Lebanon: “So…Yalla, Revolt”

This month, the UK government broke established precedent for the first time since 2006, when it published the valedictory of the outgoing British Ambassador to Lebanon, Tom Fletcher. And what a coincidence that this letter, entitled “So…Yalla, Bye” (presumably to the regime), encourages Lebanon to “build a new politics” one sentence before mentioning the garbage crisis. And this just a couple weeks before garbage crisis protests somehow overnight—as in the case of so many color revolutions before—became a “rejection of the political system.” In the same letter, Fletcher would accuse the regime of many forms of corruption, offering no specific evidence, and would characterize as pessimistic those who urge caution. Of course, he will have plenty of safety from the risk he encourages the Lebanese people to take—he already left Beirut.

(Some of the corrupt practices of which he accuses the Lebanese government, my own government engages in, though you would not know it from media reports. But we all care so much about nepotism, don’t we? I bet you can’t even tell what’s wrong in this document, because our exemplary Western media is too busy prepping you for the overthrow of the Lebanese regime, and this has never been reported on. Since I lack the lawyers that media outlets have on retainer, nor will I, but let’s just say that the problem in that document relates directly to an agency almost certainly on the ground in Beirut. But I digress…)

This is the most thinly-veiled, cynical ploy the UK government has pulled since they knowingly fomented chaos in Syria by fostering the growth of the Islamic State, in order to overthrow the Assad regime, which they did not find friendly to their vision of the future political geography of the Middle East. Naturally, this prescient-in-the-sense-that-plots-alluded-to-before-being-carried-out-are-prescient “love letter” went viral, astroturf-style. Western liberals ate it up, as they will anything served up with hip hashtags and the veneer of neoliberal buzzwords which promote the idea that “non-Western” countries are “evolving” into “democratic” societies, complete with a hyperfocus on [Western liberal] education (through which the West has spoken down from the lectern to the rest of the world for centuries).

Even Leftists, suddenly so concerned for Lebanon and ignorant to the threats faced by the country, are promoting what is an obvious attempt by Western foreign policy conspirators to reshape the region according to plans made public nearly twenty years ago. But Western Leftists have just as poor an understanding of geopolitics as do Western liberals, if not worse. After all, at least liberals are slightly more transparent in their imperialist imagination of a world dependent on “Western values” for “progress.” Rather, Western Leftists, in their repeated support of their imperialist governments’ attempts to overthrow “unfriendly” governments (in that they do not bow deeply enough), feign to support protesters by retweeting and thus spreading professional photos—often uploaded from AP and Reuters cameras—of young, rev chic activists in Western clothing, bandanas, and Guy Fawkes masks “resisting” against “violent police repression” (a term already used by mainstream media outlets in this case, yet one which seldom comes home). They live vicariously through people who they “relate to,” knowing nothing of their lives, who they are, why they are there, and in what context they or “security forces” act.

Lebanon offers a particularly acute example of this ongoing trend, situated on the borders of Israel, which loathes them, and a paramilitary- and CIA-filled Syria. The Lebanese have much more to complain about than garbage, and yes, of course they “reject the political system,” but for reasons and in a historical context about which liberal and Leftist alike know little to nothing. The “extraordinary generosity to outsiders, be they ambassadors or refugees” that Fletcher credits Lebanon, for instance, has not always extended consistently to Palestinians, nor Syrians. And yet the country and its people have offered more than they feasibly can to the victims of our disasters.

The inability of the Lebanese government to function properly is as much a product of corruption (mocked from on high by Westerners unaware of the extensive corruption of their own politicians and bureaucrats), as it is a product of influxes of populations from Western-created crises in the region. Refugees have fled not only from Palestine, forced from their homes by Israel, and a civil war encouraged by the UK and US in Syria, but also from the Iraq War. The country has not been able to absorb these populations, who would not even be there had they any choice. While reliable statistics are difficult to find, approximately 30% of the population consists of refugees; foremost from Syria, with 450,000 from Palestine, and likely over 100,000 from Iraq.

Mocking, as Fletcher did, that a country is having a difficult time delivering basic services while facing such pressure, on top of all of the security concerns, is beyond cynical and disrespectful—it is sickening. It is sickening that such a privileged, British prick would speak down to a regime and a people sustaining all of this. It is especially so as his own country’s regime and people whine about a much smaller influx of refugees from crises created of their own action and greed, absorbing them without serious economic difficulty due in part to their much larger economy, built as it was from colonial theft. There are certainly problems of corruption; there are innumerable problems facing Lebanon.

The country is a tinderbox amidst a region already engulfed, and the Western Left and liberals living vicariously through the “adventures” of imagined Lebanese revolutionaries only instigate further problems, since their support today of the “rejection of the political system” would inevitably turn to their tacit support of Western (including Israeli) intervention in the chaos that could come from upending the political system there, as neither have shown themselves able to rethink their support when what is at once an underground effort by Western governments eventually comes to the fore. From the safety of far-away fortresses, they peer out upon the “spectacle,” shouting encouragements to all parties—including those temporarily underground—to light the match, while offering promises they cannot make and will refuse to guarantee with their own life and limb, that to do so will not scorch the Earth…just as they promised to Syrians.

And so, to those liberals and Leftists in the West who so instigate, feigning familiarity and concern with a people you have never taken the chance to come to know or aid, I ask: how many of you have made significant contributions or sacrifices to aid the refugees that your governments have forced to overwhelm Lebanon? You had a chance to fight corruption in Lebanon, by tamping down the heat and clearing some of the brush, thereby lowering the stakes for those who might want to light a fire under the regime. Did you take it? Or do you shed only crocodile tears for a people when their bodies are offered to you in slick, professional, neoliberal-knock-off-revolutionary-chic photographs, ready for the international prime-time-spectacle press?

And specifically, to those liberals bold enough to refer to Fletcher’s condescension—endorsed contrary to their own custom by the British government—as a “love letter,” I’m afraid to say you have known only severely abusive relationships. A “love letter” does not typically make note of everything one has “done for you,” making no mention of or apology for all the violence to which they have subjected you, nor all that they have forced you to accommodate, meanwhile pointing out all of your flaws, with the underhanded compliment that they know you “deserve” to be better than you are.