Beirut
SOMETHING OF A GHOST sped towards Lebanon’s coastline late on Thursday night. The USS Cole, damaged by a suicide attack while at harbor in Yemen in October 2000, came to a halt outside of Lebanon’s territorial waters, just over the horizon. Its arrival marks the latest development in Lebanon’s long-running political drama, and the entrance of the United States military into an arena already crowded with rival forces.
The USS Cole appears at a particularly hopeless moment in Lebanese politics. A deadlock between the pro-Western government and the pro-Syrian, Hezbollah-led opposition, begun in November 2006, has crippled most of Lebanon’s institutions. A Parliament session scheduled to elect Lebanon’s next President, vacant since last November, failed for the 15th time. Ominously, the struggle threatened to spill over into the broader region. Egypt and Saudi Arabia, supporters of Lebanon’s pro-government forces, signaled that they would boycott an Arab summit in Damascus due to Syria’s support for Hezbollah and its allies. The presence of the Cole should be understood as a show of support for the Lebanese government, and an attempt to alter the political calculus in negotiations between the rival parties.
