Egypt's instability casts doubt on regional Islamist ambitions

As unrest continues to rock Egypt, President Mohammed Morsi must have a good sense of what his predecessor, Hosni Mubarak, felt two years ago, when he faced protests against his rule. Anything Mr Morsi does these days, it seems, is destined only to provoke new outbreaks of violence and fresh calls for his departure.

This situation raises interesting questions about the certainty of Islamist regimes dominating countries in the Middle East. What we are seeing in Egypt, which has often been at the vanguard of political change in the region, is that there is a treacherous phase after revolutions that can alter the narrative prevailing when the ancien regime falls. After all, the overthrow of King Farouk in 1952 was hailed as a grand democratic moment in Egypt's history. Yet within a few years, the country was led by a military dictatorship.

Mr Morsi appears to be facing two major problems: Egyptians have yet to digest his grab for power last November, when he declared that his decisions were not subject to judicial review. Many Egyptians saw this as an effort by the president to accumulate unchallenged authority. And the situation was little helped when Mr Morsi moved ahead with the approval of a draft constitution soon thereafter, without addressing the fears of the document's critics.

This behaviour was compounded by another of the president's actions. Since coming to power, Mr Morsi has ceded much autonomy to the armed forces and security forces, whose commitment to the revolution many Egyptians doubt, in exchange for imposing his will. The security forces are especially unpopular, and have repressed demonstrations in the Suez Canal area in recent days, as well as in Cairo. As for the armed forces, they have long tried to hijack the revolution. While they are respected, they are not entirely trusted.

The true test of success for revolutions like the one in Egypt is whether the institutions of repression are placed under the control of democratically elected civilians, and whether commanders can be held accountable. That has not happened in Egypt, where the new constitution gives considerable autonomy to the armed forces. Nor has the post-Mubarak order affected the security forces, as Mr Morsi has been unable even to appoint a new interior minister, who controls the security forces, from outside the ministry cadre.

There seem to be several Egypts coexisting uneasily today. There are the institutions of repression, holdovers from the days of Mubarak; there is the state's political apparatus, led by Mr Morsi; there are the adversaries of the president; and there is, over and above all, the general Egyptian population. Egyptians have very different, often clashing, loyalties and await tangible gains from their revolution. The cacophonic interaction of these groups prevents a consensus from emerging to push Egypt forward.

The notion that Mr Morsi is an Islamist who will try to impose an Islamist agenda on this cauldron is far too simplistic. He has tried, first, to consolidate his shaky rule. What Egyptians want more than anything is to enter into a postrevolutionary phase, in which their aspirations are met. This is easier said than done. Mr Morsi has made many mistakes in the last three months, but he is as eager as most of his countrymen to be rid of the legacy of the Mubarak era.

The president's difficulty is that he needs real power to effect change. But this involves relying on the security bodies and the types of decisions that made Mr Mubarak so hated. For instance, Mr Morsi declared a state of emergency in Port Said, Ismailiyya and Suez after rioting that followed the decision to sentence to death 21 football fans from Port Said accused of being responsible for the deaths of Al Ahly supporters at a match last year.

This created a perfect storm of resentment. Here was Mr Morsi, who had declared himself unbound by judicial review, and who had been unable to punish the security forces for what they did during the revolution, overseeing a judiciary prepared to execute football fans from Port Said, and falling back on a Mubarak-era practice and in particular the state of emergency, which Egyptians had thought they were done with.

Making matters worse, the president has not moved decisively to tackle the country's economic woes. The International Monetary Fund intends to lend $4.8 billion (Dh17.6 billion) to Egypt, but the government has delayed this process until next month. Part of the problem is that Mr Morsi is unwilling to implement tax increases on Egyptians, which are essential for the IMF loan to go through. The president is damned if he does, and damned if he doesn't. Meanwhile, with foreign reserves down to $15 billion (Dh55 billion), an agreement is needed quickly.

For those worried about what the Arab revolutions will bring, Egypt is instructive. It shows that the ideological agendas of the victors will often be battered by popular expectations. Mr Morsi won the most votes last June. Yet this backing has evaporated as the president has failed to unite Egyptians and take them into a post-Mubarak phase.

Islamists will have to absorb this message. The priority of Arab societies, from Egypt to Tunisia, from Libya to Syria, is to create prosperous, open societies. Islam is greatly valued, but it is not the bedrock of the social and political contract in most of the countries that have been through upheavals in the past two years. To replace one source of legitimacy, the people, by another, the Quran, is not what Tunisians, Egyptians, Libyans or Syrians fought for.

As Egypt shows, Islamists are viewed as natural allies against dictatorial regimes. But legitimacy comes from the ability to create an inclusive political order that does away with the past, not from a desire to stifle rediscovered political action with religious doctrine. That debate is one society can have later, freely, without intimidation.

Don’t give in to Lebanon’s men in black

Evidently no one can free Lebanon of its turbulent priests. The latest example is the decision of the mufti of the republic, Sheikh Mohammad Rashid Qabbani, to declare that Muslims who support civil marriage would no longer be considered Muslim.

In a fatwa issued Monday, Qabbani wrote that “every Muslim official, whether a deputy or a minister, who supports the legalization of civil marriage, even if it is optional, is an apostate and outside the Islamic religion.” In other words these officials, once they die, “would not be washed, would not be wrapped in a [burial] shroud, would not have prayers for their soul in line with Islamic rules, and would not be buried in a Muslim cemetery.”

For merely approving of civil marriage, a foundation of the civil state, one can be banished forever from his or her faith? This takes the debate over the authority of clerics in Lebanese life to a new high. Worse, it says that one of the most fundamental of civil habits, preparing a marriage contract, is a privilege solely of the clergy.

What Qabbani realizes is that civil marriage, if implemented, would represent a financial opportunity cost for religious professionals, who live off the services they offer. Worse, it would legitimize this notion of opportunity cost, justifying the idea that there are domains where the state must not defer to clergymen. Once that idea grows, clerics fear, their dominion over all personal-status actions will collapse.

We are under no obligation to feed the clergy, a major preoccupation of that mostly overweight profession, who have positioned themselves in highly lucrative corners of Lebanese life. But let’s assume for one moment that the status quo over marriage holds, and all the signs are that it will, what can we demand from our clergymen in exchange?

For a start, that they stay out of politics. This is addressed above all to the Maronite patriarch, Beshara Rai, whose political impulses, unlike his political talents, are second to none. When Rai came into office, his priority should have been to reform his malodorous church, which is riddled with factionalism and corruption. He had the means to do so, as most senior clerics were over retirement age. Rai did nothing.

Even as the patriarch has delayed reform of the church, he has embarked on political initiatives left and right. Rai has been a conveyor belt of political impulses, on virtually every topic under the sun. Now his priority is to push for a consensual election law, though that really is no business of his. Rai is constrained by his closeness to Michel Sleiman, so that he will neutralize any inclination he has that clashes with that of the president. Thank heavens, because on most matters Rai has tended to behave like a parochial Christian rather than as a man endowed with a national role.

So, we might allow Qabbani and Rai to continue to marry us, on condition that they stay resolutely out of political life. Would they agree? Certainly not Rai. Nor Qabbani, who has enjoyed playing politics, knowing this is accepted by his community.

But then again, is it within our rights to make such an exchange? Isn’t conceding marriage to the clerics a step too far? The line defended by supporters of civil marriage is that the churches and mosques have hijacked questions that should be well within the sphere of the state. Lebanese citizens must be granted the right to opt out of their sectarian cages, with a form of civil status as a replacement. In other words, we are entitled to tell clerics to stay out of our lives and our politics.

One wonders how this will wash with another prominent political cleric, namely Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah. Recall what happened several years ago when a satirical program poked fun at Nasrallah. His angry followers drove their motorbikes into Ashrafieh and clashed with youths in the Sodeco district. Their line of reasoning was that, as a cleric, Nasrallah was off limits to satire.

Nasrallah is the most extreme example of clerics having power in Lebanon. He indirectly has a say over the fate of most Lebanese through his political choices, but also uses his clerical status to justify his views on the religious choices of his community, while being shielded from critics outside Shiite ranks. One thing that has given Nasrallah his tremendous sway is the nature of the Lebanese system itself, which surrenders far too much influence to those speaking in the language of religion, and even more so those who use their religious clout to bolster a political agenda.

We have seen this in Sheikh Ahmad al-Assir, who took his followers to Farayya last week for a day of frolicking in the snow. He had every right to do so, but one shouldn’t be surprised that the inhabitants of the area viewed the visit as a political challenge. For them, there are no borders between religion and politics. As they saw it, Assir’s aim was to show that he had the courage to defy his Christian foes in their heartland, since few Salafists generally take to the slopes in order to relax.

Everywhere, it seems, the Lebanese have made religion a part of their daily existence. Every other sentence has the word “God” in it, and to every good wish is appended some heavenly blessing. Now clerics are trying to intimidate believers who back civil marriage, as if this most sensible of demands invites divine punishment. Intimidation comes naturally to those who feel untouchable. Their boldness is our shame.

The luxury of privacy in today’s America

The Pentagon’s inspector general has cleared Gen. John Allen, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, of accusations that he engaged in inappropriate conduct with Jill Kelly, a Tampa socialite.

Kelly’s name came to light following the resignation of David Petraeus. It was her request that the FBI investigate threatening emails she received from an anonymous source, later identified as Paul Broadwell, Petraeus’ paramour, that led investigators to uncover a trove of emails between Kelly and Allen. The allegation that some of these emails were sexual in nature prompted U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to order a formal inquiry.

The episode was an embarrassment for Allen, a moment when America wasted much energy in defense of its puritan mores. Given that military statistics show that some 30 percent of commanders fired since 2005 lost their jobs due to sexually related offenses, Allen and Petraeus were right to be worried. Petraeus opted to come clean quickly when it was revealed that he had conducted an affair, resigning as head of the Central Intelligence Agency.

What has been most disturbing about Petraeus’ and Allen’s cases is that it showed how the notion of privacy can sometimes be insignificant in the United States. Petraeus’ emails to his mistress were discovered by the FBI when they began searching for the person who had sent hostile emails to Kelly. In other words, Petraeus had no way of preserving his own privacy as the feds first trawled through his and Broadwell’s private email accounts. On top of that, Allen was soon lassoed into the scandal, without any justification whatsoever.

Panetta has been criticized for asking that Allen be investigated. For some critics, this will have hampered his actions in Afghanistan and damaged his reputation, whatever the consequences of the Pentagon investigation. But Panetta had to act because America is a nation run by lawyers, and his civilian and military lawyers recommended that the secretary refer Allen’s case to the Pentagon’s inspector general.

You have to wonder why two senior officers entrusted with leading American most sensitive military operations overseas, have to be humiliated for possibly displaying too much fondness for women. What is it about America that allows the authorities to expend a great deal of time and money to see to it that officials are faithful only to God and their spouses?

Two decades ago, the sociologist Richard Sennett wrote a fascinating article in Harper’s magazine in which he examined the American propensity to open up all aspects of people’s lives. He explained this as a consequence of the fact that the early settlers tended to congregate around their churches. This strengthened their communal bonds, and interaction, so that privacy was seen as a way of separating oneself from the community. That doesn’t mean that there isn’t a right to privacy in the modern American republic, because there is. However, time and again this has been too easily undermined by a combination of the American tendency to regard openness as a virtue, proof of one’s honesty, and the defense of free speech and a free press, as articulated in the first amendment of the Constitution.

Free speech means that when someone strays from the righteous path, this can be discussed in media outlets without fear of being silenced. Yet this didn’t quite convince the Kellys, who published a commentary in The Washington Post on Jan. 22, decrying the way they were hounded after the Petraeus scandal broke. They wrote, “Our experience of having our privacy invaded and our lives turned upside down by authorities leaking our names and the existence of private electronic correspondence highlights the need for measures that ensure citizens retain their privacy when they seek assistance and protection from law enforcement and that the names of those who report a crime are not made public.”

The Kellys also used their article to defend passage of legislation mandating that law enforcement agencies get a court-approved search warrant before they can examine emails or other electronic content. Today, all that the police need is a subpoena, which does not necessitate the consent of a court. A Senate committee has voted in favor of court approval for searches. This represents a victory for civil libertarians, because if the entire Senate endorses the proposal, law enforcement agencies will have to prove probable cause when asking for a warrant.

That may be too late for Petraeus or Allen, whose reputation has already suffered from intrusion into their emails. How ironic that both men come from the military, which plays so central a role in most agencies specialized in spying on private citizens. A society in which lawyers and security personnel are influential can hardly avoid ignoring privacy. The first tend to stick to the letter of the law, allowing little room for interpretation, while the second find no abuse too reprehensible in protecting against potential crimes or attacks.

Barack Obama is no admirer of George W. Bush. Yet when it comes to issues of privacy and civil liberties, Obama has continued what his predecessor started after 9/11. The American government and law enforcement agencies know too much about us, or want to know too much, so that whenever issues of privacy are discussed, the default position is to argue that privacy is a thing of the past, abandoned on fields littered with invasive cellular telephones and Internet networks. There is a sense that the battle is over, that privacy is a favor in this day and age when policemen can access our most personal details.

But how true is that? There is nothing that peeping toms like less than a fuss. If enough people, Americans and non-Americans alike, say no to being spied upon, they will see progress. Public safety should not justify being stripped down by utter strangers. Truly open societies are those that will thwart an excess of openness. States don’t own us, although you would hardly know that from the way they behave.

Self-destruction in the making

Suddenly, some are waking up to the dire implications of the Orthodox proposal for an election law. Even the Maronite patriarch, Beshara al-Rai has reportedly not embraced the proposal, though he rejects the 1960 law that will prevail if no alternative is found.

So, we may be heading toward another impossible Lebanese stalemate. We have problems with the new law, but will be damned if we accept the current law, while the proposal we do favor has no chance of gaining support. Now go resolve the problem.

If the Orthodox law is passed, and it is favored by most of the major Christian parties that have met in a parliamentary sub-committee—the Free Patriotic Movement, the Lebanese Forces, the Kataeb Party and the Marada movement—it will be divisive and wreak havoc on the political scene. This is hardly advisable just months before elections are supposed to take place.

The law organizes Lebanon as a single electoral district, whereby each sect would elect its own parliamentarians under a proportional representation system. The system it outlines is archaic, divisive and, well, sectarian. It is built on dissatisfaction among Christians with seeing many of their representatives chosen by predominantly Muslim electorates. Therefore it cannot stand in any way as a model for national amity. Rather than uniting the Lebanese, it divides them hopelessly, which is perhaps one reason why Rai, despite having tried to sell himself as the prime defender of Maronite interests, appears today to hesitate to go along with the proposition.

Perhaps Rai’s reluctance has something to do with President Michel Suleiman’s views of the law. The president, with whom the patriarch is close, opposes the project and intends to challenge it on constitutional grounds. The thing is that all alternatives are equally problematical, above all the current 1960 law. Most Christians, Rai included, reject the 1960 law, since it means that many Christian parliamentarians will be brought into parliament by Muslim majority electorates.

But let’s pause for a moment and ask an obvious question. Given the demographic differences in Lebanon, and the fact that the country is perhaps two-thirds Muslim, is it realistic to bend laws out of shape to prevent non-Christians from bringing Christians into parliament? Some parties, principally Hezbollah, would say yes, because they realize that the Orthodox proposal is to their advantage. It helps their allies in the Christian community, it weakens those expected to win on the basis of alliances with Sunni electorates controlled by Saad Hariri, and it ensures that the party itself gets most Shiite votes.

Moreover, by favoring the Orthodox scheme, Hezbollah is heightening the contradictions between the March 14 parties and their own voters. Had March 14 been less hasty, it would have remained more ambiguous about the Orthodox proposal when it came out. Instead, many Christians in the opposition announced they favored the plan, to rally Christians who largely support the proposal. Yet, since the 1960 law is in the interest of March 14, this creates a dilemma. If March 14 Christians say no to the Orthodox project, they may lose their base; if they say yes, they may lose the election.

Many of the March 14 Christians are beginning to realize they are trapped. The aim of the Orthodox proposal—put forth by the ex-deputy parliament speaker, Elie Ferzli, a prominent ally of Syria and Hezbollah—was to deny March 14 Christian candidates support from sizable pro-Saad Hariri Sunni electorates. If the plan goes through, Sunni voters will not be able to help Christian candidates in key districts such as Zahle, Koura, the West Beqaa, Tripoli and Beirut III. Overall, Hariri would lose as a consequence.

The Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea apparently doesn’t sense that when he backed the Orthodox proposal, it was a maneuver too far. In order not to anger his Maronite base, he may now face a new election law that guarantees he wins fewer parliamentarians than he had hoped for. Yet Geagea also feels he has a growing Christian electorate and seeks to take on Michel Aoun among their coreligionists, while showing that he does not rely on Hariri’s backing.

No wonder this has strained ties between March 14 Christians, namely the Lebanese Forces and Kataeb Party, and the Future Movement. For Future, the Christians may be asserting their independence, but it means that as a whole March 14 loses. This would deny Saad Hariri a victory he needs to secure, at a time when the regime of Bashar al-Assad may be about to fall.

Beyond that, the Greek Orthodox law tells us something about the Christians in Lebanese society. As they struggle to define a role for themselves in a country where they have become a minority, some Christians are searching for all possible means, no matter how destructive, to reaffirm themselves against the Muslim majority. Some but not all. A meeting at Boutros Harb’s residence on Thursday strongly condemned the Greek Orthodox plan, saying that it would in time lead to the disintegration and disappearance of Lebanon.

Lebanon, as a unifying idea, risks being abandoned, as does the country’s social contract. From March 14 Christians, who once saw their alliance with Muslims as the cornerstone of a new Lebanon, this is worrisome. Christian insecurity is destroying the country, and not enough Christian leaders are admitting to this dramatic situation.

Witness for an execution?

Recently, the daily newspaper Al-Akhbar published the names of witnesses who are supposedly scheduled to appear before the Special Tribunal for Lebanon. Because judicial cases often require that the identity of witnesses remain secret until the last possible moment, that information should not have been publicized.

Strangely, the newspaper’s staff member most critical of the United Nations investigation of Rafiq Hariri’s assassination is the law editor, Omar Nashabe. His beef against the first investigator, Detlev Mehlis, was that he had put witnesses at risk by not placing them in a special protection program. So what did Al-Akhbar do? It published the names of witnesses who enjoy no protection, arguing that knowledge of their identity, an intimidating measure by definition, represented a “public right,” something the Lebanese people were entitled to know.

Since we’re worried about the public good, isn’t it true that Al-Akhbar has never warmed to the investigation of the Hariri murder, because those it sympathized with politically were likely the culprits in the crime? For all the talk that the paper is an invigorating and daring outlet, the reality is that it functions as the semi-official mouthpiece of the March 8 coalition, and that on the STL its agenda has been to discredit virtually everything the institution does.

In other words, the public’s right to follow a fair trial is precisely what Al-Akhbar seeks to undermine, through partisan reporting on most matters related to the UN investigation and trial. What the newspaper really wants, apparently, is for the Special Tribunal’s legal case to collapse so that it can then turn around and say, “We told you so!”

Ibrahim al-Amin, editor of Al-Akhbar, wrote a long piece justifying his paper’s publication of the witness names. It is from that missive that we took the contention earlier that the “public right” justified publication. Amin went on to argue that Hariri’s assassination was a public affair, which it certainly was, and that this had led to myriad leaks from the investigation. Presumably, Amin’s way of remedying the plethora of leaks, which he seemed implicitly to condemn, was to engage in further leaks and embarrass the tribunal.

Amin also mentioned his newspaper’s old target, Detlev Mehlis, pointing out that he “openly published witnesses’ testimony in his reports.” Perhaps, but his reports were in a way designed to do precisely such a thing. Yet he didn’t name names or give out addresses. Or perhaps Al-Akhbar is more impressed by the empty reports of Serge Brammertz and Daniel Bellemare, who not only told us nothing, but in retrospect appeared to cover up for their lack of progress in the investigation, which long delayed the start of a trial.

More ominously, Amin pointed out that “if anyone in Lebanon or the region, or even in The Hague, thinks there are any secrets or information that are unknown to those who want to know them—they are deluded and mistaken, if not deranged and excessively self-regarding.” In other words, Al-Akhbar only mirrored its environment by publishing the witnesses’ names, because it is easy for anyone, above all Hezbollah, to find out who they are and where they live.

Perhaps, but that troubling situation seems hardly to be in the public interest. Nor is Al-Akhbar’s ability to undercut the valuable principle of judicial confidentiality, particularly when names are fed to the paper to be published, and to issue warnings. But if there were doubts as to Al-Akhbar’s true intent, Amin removed them by writing that the paper had published documents “deemed necessary to counter the international campaign of fabrications targeting the Resistance.”

If defending the Resistance is the yardstick of Al-Akhbar’s journalism, then we’re entitled to ask whether the paper is a reliable outlet for anything pertaining to the killing of Rafiq Hariri. After all, Amin plainly believes that the indictments against four Hezbollah members are false. In that context, we can doubt whether publication of the witnesses’ names was an effort to inform, as opposed to frightening those helping prosecutors to make the indictments stick.

And yet Al-Akhbar would have had a good case if it bothered to examine the conduct of the investigation itself. Why has it taken a full seven years for the investigation to come to a trial? The Al-Akhbar staff knows well that after Mehlis the investigation was flawed, and that Brammertz did virtually nothing while in Beirut. The work of Bellemare, too, has been highly questionable, not because of the evidence he garnered, but because his indictments present us with a crime that is without any discernible motive.

Yes, the UN investigation for a long time was a scandal. But that’s hardly because the investigators mounted a conspiracy against Hezbollah (whose guilt still needs to be proven in a court of law). It was because the last two did much less than was expected of them. They then hid this under layers of obfuscation, all the while trying to persuade us that all was going swimmingly, when it wasn’t

That’s what Al-Akhbar should be focusing on, not on the bogus benefits derived from leaking witness names. The sole practical consequence of that will be to frighten others appearing before the tribunal. There is no public good here, just an imposition of silence.

Double standards as the US fails to act while Syria suffers

When it comes to Syria, it is strange how one particular group, which was outspoken during and after the US invasion of Iraq, has been so quiet. They are the people who pointed out that the Iraqi intervention in 2003 was illegitimate because it was not sanctioned by the UN Security Council. Yet today, as carnage continues in Syria, no one has mentioned that a deadlocked Security Council has only meant endless suffering for Syrians entitled to UN action.

If UN approval is the benchmark of legitimacy for foreign military intervention, then what about a lack of approval? Some 60,000 people are said to have died in Syria, and yet the international community has been unable to alleviate this ghastly state of affairs. Syrians are being wantonly killed, and one doubts whether they really care if outside powers that would assist them first gain UN consent.

This mood pushes the debate over Syria on to a different plane. Accepting that there are situations short of a UN vote where powers can take military measures in a country, let's say on humanitarian grounds, undermines the belief that Security Council endorsement is a necessity. If the suffering of a population is enough to lead to action by states, then it opens the door to intervention on grounds that are well short of those presently required.

The suffering in Syria cries for more than the lethargic international reaction. Bashar Al Assad's regime has gunned down unarmed civilians demonstrating peacefully. It has bombarded neighbourhoods with artillery and aircraft. And it has engaged in collective punishment of districts hostile to central authority. It has also kidnapped and tortured thousands of people, many of whom have disappeared. In short, its repression has been repulsive enough to merit outside involvement against regime forces.

And yet we must remember that in Washington these days, one is unlikely to find any appreciation for this position. President Barack Obama was a staunch critic of the Bush administration's war in Iraq, and is not likely to agree that cruelty on its own warrants America's entry into a war on behalf of a foreign population. Not only does Mr Obama want to draw down forces in the Middle East, a position supported by many at home, he does not want to take a position that might legitimise his predecessor's decision to sent troops to Iraq.

Yet the president did favour armed action in Libya, and explained it as being necessary to save lives. As Mr Obama told an audience at the National Defence University in March 2011: "[Muammar] Qaddafi declared that he would show 'no mercy' to his own people. He compared them to rats, and threatened to go door-to-door to inflict punishment ... We knew that if we waited one more day Benghazi … could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world."

How strange to see the president reaching for a human-rights argument in that context, something he now refuses to do in Syria. Mr Obama has set just one red line there: the employment by regime forces of chemical weapons. However, the standard is so high that the Syrian army can kill at will while avoiding any resort to such weapons. Is such a tripwire for action useful, so that it is apparent that Mr Obama is simply dancing around taking a decision?

Mr Obama has often made the case that the United States can no longer afford the commitments of the past. That's perhaps true, but in the present context does it really serve Washington well to appear so half-hearted? Syria is no secondary conflict. What happens there will affect vital US interests, above all the containment of Iranian influence in the Levant. Only days ago, an Iranian official close to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei declared that Mr Al Assad's removal was a red line for Tehran. Mr Obama offered no riposte, although Mr Al Assad's exit will greatly enhance American aims in the Middle East.

In other words, can America be effective if its refusal to go to war is always viewed as a default position? No one is suggesting that Mr Obama dispatch troops at every hint of a threat. America no longer has the financial means to maintain the military posture it did during the years of President George W Bush. But the solution is not to make it clear that military action has been taken off the table.

More important, can America anchor the international system if the worst abuses against international principles go unpunished, largely because Washington is so aloof? It's not enough to support others in such endeavours. France won't replace the United States, even if the French have shown nerve in recent years. France grasped the implications of the Syrian conflict early on, and while its ability to act is limited, it has done more for Syria's opposition than Mr Obama.

International law is not there to validate American inaction. That the UN has been deadlocked over Syria takes us back to the Cold War years and only discredits international collaboration, Mr Obama's purported ideal. If this is acceptable for the Obama administration, for whom stalemate offers an excuse not to act, then it tells us something about American lassitude that is worrisome for the future.

The Orthodox proposal defended

Christian leaders who support the so-called Greek Orthodox plan for an election law have been defiant in the face of attacks directed against them for their choice. That’s to be expected, since part of their strategy is to show their coreligionists that they are willing to pay a price for the law, even if it means being criticized by their allies.

What is worrisome is that all this will only make the law more appealing to Christians, who believe that a proposal that creates sectarian outposts in Lebanon is actually good for their community. Unfortunately, this only confirms what many have long suspected: Psychologically, many Christians favor a federation of communities in Lebanon, where they can feel less of a minority than they do today in an officially unified state. Sadly, many of their leaders agree.

Take the Gemayel family and the Kataeb Party. In the Metn, where their political power is concentrated, there are very few Muslims, and yet Sami Gemayel has been at the vanguard of efforts to push the Orthodox proposal. Amin Gemayel declared to Hezbollah’s Al-Manar this week, “I am committed to the Orthodox Gathering law” before adding that he would accept a “better one” if it were suggested.

This notion of accepting a “better law” is interesting, and has also been a leitmotif in Samir Geagea’s comments on the Orthodox proposal. As Geagea recently remarked at a press conference: “No doubt the Orthodox Gathering’s proposal has many gaps, but criticizing a draft law without presenting another proposal that can be approved in the parliament is unacceptable.” The implication was that, offered an improved law, the Lebanese Forces would reconsider their endorsement of the Orthodox project.

How odd it is to see Christians turning against the 1960 law. After all, during the 1990s, that law was seen as a desirable alternative to those imposed by Syria and its local allies. Syria’s aims were to ensure that its Lebanese allies won parliamentary seats and to stifle Christian aspirations, through laws that would either water down Christian electorates (except in the north, where the pro-Franjieh Christians dominated) or hand the advantage to pro-Syrian Christian politicians.

Indeed, former Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Sfeir repeatedly defended the 1960 law in the past. What he liked was the fact that it mandated voting at the level of the qada, or small electoral district. The thinking then was not very different from today: Christians would benefit from a law that allowed them to vote among themselves. Ironically, the 1960 law has come to embody Christian fears, when less than two decades ago it was regarded as an antidote to communal anxiety.

But the Christians have been devoured by new anxieties since the Syrian withdrawal in 2005. Christians have remained divided, and elections have become periods in which these divisions are used against the community by Sunni, Shiite and Druze politicians. It’s understandable that Christians are not pleased, but the remedy is not to cure the symptoms of the illness, but the illness itself.

Yet what we are witnessing today is hardly an effort to cure the illness of Christian fractiousness. When Geagea backs the Orthodox law it is not any more a sign that he is seeking a reconciliation with Michel Aoun than that Aoun’s support for the law indicates that he wants to make friends with Geagea. The consensus around the Orthodox project from the Lebanese Forces, the Kataeb, the Aounists and Marada is an effort to increase their appeal at the expense of their Christian rivals, so that each political group can tell Christians it supported a law perceived as good for the community.

To say that the 1960 law is there to please Druze leader Walid Jumblatt in Aley and the Shouf is over-simplification. Jumblatt recently denounced the “isolationist” discourse of Christians, and the unfortunate reality is that he was correct. What will the Orthodox plan do but reinforce Christian isolation? Jumblatt benefits from the 1960 law, but so too does Saad Hariri, and the law allows him to help Lebanese Forces candidates in several electoral districts. Geagea sees this, but doesn’t want anyone to say that he is Hariri’s lapdog.

Several politicians have looked at the current debate without a sectarian eye. They have questioned how the Orthodox proposal benefits Lebanon as a whole. In what way does it ensure that elections, an instance of national institutional rejuvenation, are either national or rejuvenating? All the Orthodox idea does is to create the framework for a Lebanon broken up into separate sectarian islands, which have no incentive to deal with one another.

This is the last thing that Christians need. Geagea gained in stature during the past seven years thanks to his voicing, specifically, of Sunni Muslim concerns. One reason he was obligated to open up to Sunnis is that electoral calculations required it. By the same token, Hezbollah has had to appeal to Christians in mixed areas, as Christians have appealed to Shiites, so they could win seats together, for instance in Jezzine. What’s wrong with that? Cross-sectarian cooperation is a saving grace that the Lebanese system still offers.

Let’s forget for a moment who wins according to what law. The moment one factors short-term expectations of gain into an election law proposal, everyone suffers. That was, of course, what characterized Syria’s many previous election laws in Lebanon, and yet we now see Lebanese Christians pining for the same standard. The future of the Christian community lies in a united Lebanon, not a communal ghetto. The Orthodox law delays realization of this.