There is so much knowing pontification in the blogosphere that it’s hard to separate conjecture from knowledge. This lengthy piece by Michael Totten, a man who has spent some time in Lebanon, is quite thoughtful and informed, recognizing the fundamental tragedy that is now befalling the Lebanese people for the umpteenth time:

But democratic Lebanon cannot win a war against Hezbollah, not even after Hezbollah is weakened by IAF raids. Hezbollah is the most effective Arab fighting force in the world, and the Lebanese army is the weakest and most divided. The Israelis beat three Arab armies in six days in 1967, but a decade was not enough for the IDF to take down Hezbollah.

The majority of Lebanon’s people were wise and civilized enough to take the gun out of politics after the fifteen year war. Lebanon was the only Arab country to do this, the only Arab country that preferred dialogue, elections, compromise, and debate to the rule of the boot and the rifle. But Hezbollah remained outside that mainstream consensus and did everything it could, with backing from the Syrian Baath and the Iranian Jihad, to strangle Lebanon’s democracy in its cradle.

Disarming Hezbollah through persuasion and consensus was not possible in the first year of Lebanon’s independence. Disarming Hezbollah by force wasn’t possible either. The Lebanese people have been called irresponsible and cowardly by some of their friends in America for refusing to resume the civil war. Unlike Hezbollah, though, most Lebanese know better than to start unwinnable wars. This is wisdom, not cowardice, and it’s sadly rare in the Arab world now. They are being punished entirely too much for what they have done and for what they can’t do.

Israel and Lebanon (especially Lebanon) will continue to burn as long as Hezbollah exists as a terror militia freed from the leash of the state. The punishment for taking on Hezbollah is war. The punishment for not taking on Hezbollah is war. Lebanese were doomed to suffer war no matter what. Their liberal democratic project could not withstand the threat from within and the assaults from the east, and it could not stave off another assault from the south. War, as it turned out, was inevitable even if the actual shape of it wasn’t. Peace was not in the cards for Lebanon. Its democracy turned out to be neither a strength nor a weakness. It was irrelevant.

I think this photo essay goes along nicely with Totten’s piece. Amal, Druze, PLO, Christian, Hezbollah, Lebanese Forces, and Sunni militias all alternately fought with, aligned against, and operated among and between one another in the brutal, decades-long Lebanese Civil War. It’s worth contemplating this disastrous scenario when we consider what’s now going on in Iraq as well as when we consider the reluctance of the Lebanese to reignite conflict with Hezbollah for the last 15 years.