Tuesday, March 01, 2005
Who killed al-Hariri?
One of the big puzzles is over who killed Rafiq al-Hariri in Lebanon. Robert Fisk seemed to think there was a chance that Syria did it. Juan Cole listed Syria as having "means, motive, and opportunity." And certainly the combined Sunni, Druse and Maronite population thinks Syria was to blame because it's out in the streets saying so. But was it? As Patrick Seale wrote in The Guardian, "[A]ttributing responsibility for the murder to Syria is implausible. The murder is more likely to be the work of one of its many enemies....Hariri was not a diehard enemy of Syria. For 10 of the past 12 years he served as Lebanon's prime minister under Syria's aegis. A few days before his murder on February 14 he held a meeting with Syria's deputy foreign minister, Walid Muallim. They were reported to have discussed a forthcoming visit by Hariri to Damascus." Seale suggests that right-wing Lebanese Christians, Muslim fundamentalists, and Israel might have an interest in Hariri's death. My guess is that this was planned in our own Department of Defense. The basis for this guess is the quality of the bombing. It took significant skill and the best of explosives to pull this off. Consider how many attacks have failed. The attack on Musharraf, for example. A number of Iraqi officials. But this one succeeded so well that it wasn't even a close thing. Mossad? For them, Washington basically calls the tune. (Thanks to the Mahablog for bringing up this issue. I have been meaning to write about it since the assassination, but other duties have impinged.)
I agree. While Bushco's reaction could be purely opportunistic, the reaction to al-Harir's assassination has a peculiarly staged quality to it. There's certainly hostility toward the Syrian occupation, but something caused the crystallization of opinion and it doesn't seem to have been evidence.
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