The Gemayel Assassination
The BBC early this morning was reporting that John Bolton was claiming that Syria was behind the death of Pierre Gemayel, so they could engineer a coup. Ignoring for the moment that John Bolton would be hard pressed to explain the difference between a coup and a coupe, it would have been nice if he had provided some indication as to why he thought this, and why such a claim would come from the recess-appointed UN ambassador and not a State Department official who actually had a brief on Lebanon or the Middle East.
The ‘Noz, a student of Arabic and a traveler to the area, shrugged his shoulders, so I checked in with Pierre at Candide’s Notebooks who is Lebanese, EDB of Anecdotes from a Banana Republic who lives in Lebanon, Pat Lang of Sic Semper Tyrannis who had responsibility for the area at DIA, and Dr. Cole of Informed Comment, who lived there for years.
Lots of shrugging going on, although Pat Lang did sort of indicate that it might have been Pierre’s turn, as assassination has been a frequent cause of death in the Gemayel family.
The problem is trying to figure out who benefits from the death of a minor political figure with a famous name in the fractured political world of Lebanon. There are few truly disinterested parties with the knowledge to unravel the mystery.
