[Peptobismol]

..From the perspective of Lebanon

http://www.jidaily.com/bKkOh

Particularly interesting is this piece:

From news article:
During the 1990s, the Lebanese political class robotically regurgitated Syrian-imposed slogans, and Hezbollah is reproducing the same phenomenon today with the “Resistance, people, army” mantra, thereby aborting any domestic debate about its armed status. As such, Nasrallah pointed to Michel Sleiman’s endorsement of the formulation, which the president offered on Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV no less. The Druze leader Walid Jumblatt has also performed the required ritualistic profession of this mandatory article of faith.

The absence of any reference to the “state” in this formula, and its substitution with the category of “people” is not accidental. It is useful in this regard to recall a peculiar March 2007 encounter between Jumblatt, when he was still hostile to Hezbollah, with the correspondent of the Iranian Arabic-language Al-Alam TV in New York. In response to a question about Hezbollah’s 2006 “victory” against Israel, Jumblatt replied that he had publicly asked to whom Nasrallah would offer this alleged victory, then added that Nasrallah’s response was “to the Lebanese people and the Arabic and Islamic umma.” Jumblatt said that he would have preferred for the victory to be offered to the Lebanese “state,” as the state alone must have the right to take the decision of making war or peace.

The correspondent then asked Jumblatt, “Is the state more important than the people?” To which Jumblatt replied emphatically, “Yes!” Jumblatt wasn’t offering a gratuitous thought about political philosophy, nor was he mounting a defense on behalf of statism. Rather, he understood the underlying premise of the question, which directly echoed a central policy of the Islamic Revolution in Iran.

Dissociating the peoples from their governments in the Arab world was and remains a vital aim of the Iranian revolutionary regime. The Islamic Revolution posits a leadership role for Iran as the vanguard of the “oppressed” Muslim masses against the “arrogant” Western forces of repression and local governments allied with them. As such, Tehran seeks to directly address the people over the heads of governments, to imbue them with an Iranian revolutionary ethos, and, when possible, to lend them material support or establish local organizations that promulgate or go along with Iran’s political line and undermine local political and religious elites and establishments.