❊ Oh Please Spare Us The Outrage Over Elias El Murr

In today’s Al-Akhbar wikileaks scoop, one of the people who came out most damaged is Minister of Defense Elias El Murr. According to the cables:

Israel cannot bomb bridges and infrastructure in the Christian areas,” Murr was cited as saying.

“Murr is trying to ascertain how long an offensive would be required to clean out Hizballah… The LAF will move to pre-position food, money, and water with these units so they can stay on their bases when Israel comes for Hizbollah — discreetly, Murr added,” the cable read. “For Murr, the LAF’s strategic objective was to survive a three week war ‘completely intact’ and able to take over once Hizbollah’s militia has been destroyed.”

Many pro-Hezbollah people, reading this in their favorite newspaper were scandalized. Angry Arab (who regularly contributes to Al-Akhbar) spoke for many when he wrote:

There should be one political priority in Lebanon: the call for the resignation and trial of Al-Murr: who seems to give advice to Israel on how to beat Hizbullah and win support from the Lebanese population.

It is easy to sit and preach after the dust has settled, the bombing has stopped and quasi normalcy has resumed. What many of these hollier-than-thou finger-waggers are forgetting is the context within which Mr. Murr was making those remarks (if accurate). Bombs were falling on Lebanon and the Israelis were behaving as madmen. It was perfectly natural for the Minister of Defense — who realized that we were on our own — to get into the “Let’s save what can be saved” mode and bargain with the devil.

[Update: It was brought to my attention that Mr. Murr’s comments were NOT made during the July war of 2006, but in March 2008. Still, as I mentioned in the comments, I think my argument still stands]

Many Lebanese were livid at Hezbollah at the time. In their eyes, the party of god was the one who brought this onto us with its recklessness. It was not insane for Mr. Murr to propose: “Fine, if you won’t stop the bombing campaign, take Hezbollah but at least spare our Legitimate army and please don’t bomb areas that have nothing to do with Hezbollah”.

I’m not saying Mr. Murr is a winged angel, but trying to vilify him as a treacherous devil worshipper is to forget what a messy thing the July war was, the divisions it spawned and the raw emotions it incited.

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Note: Posts with titles starting with an ❊ (asterisk) are my opinion and article posts. I used this system to separate long posts from quick links and comments.