Hizbullah’s nefarious puppet speaks:

“I am not going to make any move against the tribunal without full Lebanese consensus,” said Mr. Miqati, well known here as a politician and philanthropist.

Asked if Hezbollah would accept such a stance, he replied indignantly: “I am the prime minister and I will decide. If they do not accept, let them not accept.”

All caveats apply. Yes, he could be telling Western journalists what Westerners want to hear, or he could simply be lying to create the appearance of independence, or he could be buying time to make it easier to form a functioning government. It could also be that Miqati is not automatically going to do Hizbullah’s bidding on an extremely controversial issue. The point is that we don’t really know as much as many of us are pretending we know.

What I find remarkable is that in the Western press pretty much everyone, and I mean everyone, who has written something about Lebanon in the last month has automatically assumed that Miqati as prime minister is unacceptable, Hariri and his allies must be supported by Western governments, and failure to de-stabilize the new government by supporting Hariri’s opposition is tantamount to a complete abandonment of Lebanon. This is why it is supposedly imperative that we side with the coalition that has not commanded popular majority support in ages, and it is why we apparently must rally against a unity government that has some chance of avoiding renewed civil strife. Count me as a skeptic.