The Destroyers Are Coming

Like Hezbollah’s weapons, the American destroyers will not be used against the Lebanese people. But their mere presence will shift the strategic balance.

To many Lebanese, it will seem insane to compare American warships to Hezbollah’s weapons. After all, Hezbollah is a local resistance movement that is exclusively meant to fight Israel, while America is a trigger-happy foreign power that is trespassing our sovereignty to bomb our brains out. Right?

But who said anything about the US warships invading or bombing Lebanon? The USS Cole and the other ships coming soon to our neighborhood are just going to hang around. In fact, they’ll be so far we won’t be able to see them.

But that doesn’t mean they won’t make a difference. Lebanon is divided into two, roughly equal groups that are struggling for power. One is backed by Iran and Syria and the other is backed by the west and the rest of the Arab world. Hezbollah had an advantage: It possesses an Iranian arsenal that it’s using for leverage in internal politics. The pro-westerns were being outgunned, and their American allies have decided to fix the situation by lending them some deterrence of their own.

But isn’t it unpatriotic to use American guns against fellow Lebanese? 

Not necessarily. Hezbollah’s weapons are from Iran, a persian country in south-west Asia. The party of God regularly promises that it won’t use them against fellow Lebanese, but their threat remains an undertone. Besides, can’t we say the same thing of the American warships? If they’re just going to sit there (being “in the vicinity” as the US chief of staff puts it), sooner or later everyone (except Hezbollah and their backers) is going to forget about them.

Now that the threat of mutual destruction is established, the two sides can hammer a deal out and hopefully progress can be made.