Lebanon Rising

Busy weekend at my house. I installed and ran Turbo Tax, because I still have to do the FAFSA for my daughter for next year's college, and the signature page has to be postmarked by tomorrow, and you need your taxable income (or something from your 1040) in order to complete the FAFSA. Looks like that's tonight's order of business.

My daughter did her taxes for the first time. Taxable income: $1029. Taxes withheld: $8.93. Tax refund: $9. Not too shabby, getting a return on tax withholding.

With all the taxes and fighting with a new printer (it doesn't recognize that I actually did take the tape off the color ink cartridge), I didn't get to follow the news much. Monday morning before taking the car to the shop I turned on Fox News Channel (I never turn on the TV in the mornings and don't know why I did this time). They showed the protesters in Lebanon in front of the government buildings, waving red and white flags and being rousted by gun-carrying men in jungle-green camouflage army fatigues. Police? Syrian army masquerading as Lebanese army? I didn't have time to find out.

Off to the shop and work, with worst-case scenarios running in my mind. Tiananmen Square? It certainly had the potential.

Last night I tried the news again, and they had announced that the Syrian-backed Lebanese government had resigned. What a relief! And another vindication for President Bush's approach to the Middle East. Yes, people long for liberty, and when they are given hope, they grab for their freedom.

I still remember seeing the news back in the 1980s (or was it the '70s?) of what Beirut looked like. To the news cameras, Beirut was a dry, dusty, bombed-out disaster area.

In the mid-80s I had decided to read through the Bible, and I was stunned to find references to "the cedars of Lebanon." This country is always spoken of in the Bible as a lush, beautiful land--an example of the glory of God's creation. And even in modern times, before their civil war, Beirut was known as the Paris of the Middle East. How far it had fallen.

Certainly, the future of Lebanon hasn't yet been decided, but hope is growing. Today's WorldNetDaily commentary page has two columns on the events in Lebanon. Joseph Farah, himself a Christian of Lebanese descent, wrote on events there. He concludes with the following:

Honestly, I never really expected to see Lebanon so close to freedom and independence again. I hoped for it. I wished for it. I prayed for it. But now I can taste it – and so, apparently, can the Lebanese people.

Don't think for a moment this is all happening in a vacuum. There wouldn't be this hunger for freedom and people power in Lebanon today had the people there not just witnessed Iraq's first free election.

The people are taking Lebanon back. Freedom is on the march in the Middle East. It's time to turn up the heat on Syria and Lebanon.

Peter Brookes writes in the New York Post, with emphasis on the Syrian presence in Lebanon. His summary is very similar. "But Syria is swimming against the tide of history — revolutionary, democratic change is taking place in the Middle East. Thanks to President Bush's unwavering stance on freedom and democracy, a new, free Muslim world is just over the horizon."

Gotta love it. Stay tuned...