A Sneak Preview of The Road to Fatima Gate

[Valin]

Power Line:

Here is a preview of the opening pages of my new book, The Road to Fatima Gate: The Beirut Spring, the Rise of Hezbollah, and the Iranian War Against Israel.
Michael J. Totten
2/17/11


Introduction: The Beirut Spring

"We don't want the great Syrian prison."
Kamal Jumblatt

"Rafik Hariri is the person who made Lebanon into a nice place from a place that had nothing nice in it."
Lebanese schoolchild

On February 14, 2005, an unseen assassin in downtown Beirut activated the detonator on an improvised explosive device and turned former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri's motorcade into a fireball. The blast ripped apart vehicles and ignited their gas tanks, shattered buildings in every direction, blew out the windows of the refurbished Phoenicia InterContinental Hotel, and left a crater in the street deep enough to swallow a house. The concussion wave shook foundations everywhere in the capital, and the sound echoed off the sides of the mountains.

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Thomas Friedman, the veteran journalist who cut his teeth in Beirut during the war, issued a stark warning in the New York Times. "There will be no velvet revolutions in this part of the world," he wrote. "The walls of autocracy will not collapse with just one good push. As the head-chopping insurgents in Iraq, the suicide bombers in Saudi Arabia and the murderers of Mr. Hariri have all signaled: The old order in this part of the world will not go quietly into this good night. You put a flower in the barrel of their gun and they'll blow your hand and your head right off."

(Snip)