Iraq as Lebanon Fears for the Future

The US Vice-President Dick Cheney and some of those close to him in Washington have been very taken with the “Lebanese model” for Iraq. Presumably, this conjures up the vision of a pluralist republic, open to free enterprise and foreign capital, presided over by an elite of zu‘ama (notables and local leaders), with sufficient common interest in the status quo to keep the whole thing going. This comes either from a selective reading of pre-1967 Lebanese political history, or from a heavily edited version of the post-Ta’if era.