If I hear or see one more Bush worshipper claim that what’s happening in Lebanon is a “Democratic” revolution or that “Democracy is on the march” in Lebanon, I think I am going to put my fist through whatever viewing screen I happen to be attendant to at the moment.

Putting aside the highly tendentious claim that what is happening in Lebanon (the anti-Syrian part, anyway) is because of Bush’s Middle-East policy, it isn’t even accurate to describe the anti-Syrian demonstrations as a “Democracy” movement.

The reason for this is simple, Lebanon is already a Democracy! It’s not a perfect one, to be sure. But, it has been having contested elections for both a parliamentary body and for President for a few years now. Critics of Syria maintain that the Lebanese elections were heavily rigged in Syria’s favor. But, quite frankly, a lot of their criticism of the Lebanese elections [such as bribery, and gerrymandered districts] can also be directed at the recent Iraqi elections that Bush and his supporters touted as a victory for democracy.

Ironically, Syria has actually been loosening its grip on the electoral process in Lebanon recently, and currently exerts an influence on the outcome similar to how we influenced the Iraqi elections. Scott Ritter, for example, claimed recently that the pro-US Allawi Gvt. — with our backing — fudged the electoral totals for the winning Shi’ite religious party to deprive them of an outright majority in the new Iraqi parliament. An assertion that gains some credence when you remember that the iraqi vote totals were delayed due to “irregularities.”

So what’s really going on?

Technically, what is happening in Syria is an INDEPENDENCE movement. As the Christian Science Monitor observed:

” Most of the demonstrators who contributed to bringing down Lebanon’s government cite the spontaneous revolutions that have swept former Soviet satellite states, in particular in Georgia and Ukraine, which were broadcast live on Al Jazeera and other Arabic channels. In a way, Lebanon has a lot more in common with these countries than with Iraq, Egypt, or Saudi Arabia because it has a free press and a vibrant political opposition. Lebanon is the most democratic of all the Arab countries.”

And, while independence movements often are democratic in nature, they don’t necessarily have to be.

The accurate way to describe the wave of anti-Syrian protests in Syria is as follows:

A significant portion of the native inhabitants of an occupied Middle-Eastern country are rebelling against the once welcomed, but now unwelcome, occupying force, and demanding them to leave. But apparently, the Shi’ite muslim majority wants the occupying force to stay, at least for a while.

I hope that clears things up for people.

Hmm….now that I’ve written that down, the description seems vaguely familiar for some reason.