{"id":2577,"date":"2005-12-15T16:41:59","date_gmt":"2005-12-15T23:41:59","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2005-12-15T16:41:59","modified_gmt":"2005-12-15T23:41:59","slug":"there-was-never-any-doubt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2005\/12\/15\/there-was-never-any-doubt\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;There Was Never Any Doubt&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Michael Young on the assassination of Lebanese MP Gebran Tueni in <a href=http:\/\/www.reason.com\/links\/links121505.shtml>today&#8217;s <i>Reason<\/i> online<\/a>:<UL>There was never any doubt that Syria was behind his murder. There are those who will, out of sheer malice, demand that Bashar Assad&#8217;s fingerprints be lifted from the detonation device before they can believe such a reckless accusation (what they fear most, of course, is finding themselves on the same side as the Bush administration).<\/ul>\n<p>Never <i>any<\/i> doubt? Really? I could have sworn that <a href=http:\/\/www.reason.com\/hitandrun\/2005\/12\/the_meaning_of_1.shtml#012002>just yesterday<\/a>, <i>Reason<\/i>&#8216;s Tim Cavanaugh injected quite a lot of doubt into the discussion when he described Tueni&#8217;s position on Lebanon&#8217;s Shi&#8217;ites:<\/p>\n<ul>Nobody knows how many Shi&#8217;ites there are in Lebanon (because there hasn&#8217;t been a census since 1940; CIA demographic estimates don&#8217;t break out the Muslim sects), but it&#8217;s reasonable to assume they are the largest single religious group, and Hizbollah is the most important party representing them\u2014more prominent than Amal, the other major Shi&#8217;a party. So how can you keep Hizbollah out of the political process? [Tueni&#8217;s] response was that the Shi&#8217;ites could have whatever representatives they chose, but only for the limited number of parliamentary seats that were designated for Shi&#8217;ites decades ago, and that that number shouldn&#8217;t be increased to reflect population changes.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Let&#8217;s say you and I start a business,&#8221; he said, &#8220;and we split the shares 50-50. If I have four children and you have one, that doesn&#8217;t mean my children should get 80 percent of the shares.&#8221;<\/ul>\n<p>I&#8217;m sure the pacifists in Hezbollah were thrilled by that statement.<\/p>\n<p>Young, who argues for the US to step even deeper into the Lebanon\/Syria quicksand, tells us that only &#8220;sheer malice&#8221; could explain the demand for conclusive evidence of Syria&#8217;s (and more specifically, Assad&#8217;s) involvement. That&#8217;s about as reasonable as saying that only militant atheism could account for skepticism about Intelligent Design. But honestly, I&#8217;m relieved he said it. Now we know &#8212; was there <i>ever any doubt?<\/i> &#8212; that Young&#8217;s call for an expanded investigation into the matter is pure baloney. Why investigate what cannot be questioned? Let&#8217;s get the Marines into Damascus ASAP.     <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Michael Young on the assassination of Lebanese MP Gebran Tueni in today&#8217;s Reason online:There was never any doubt that Syria was behind his murder. There are those who will, out of sheer malice, demand that Bashar Assad&#8217;s fingerprints be lifted from the detonation device before they can believe such a reckless accusation (what they fear [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[676],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-2577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-antiwar-movement"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2577"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2577\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2577"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=2577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}