Lebanon has a choice

The madness, the lip-dribbling insanity, the destruction, the complete disregard for human dignity...

But enough about my Christmas weekend in a full house. Let's get back to the War on Terror.

At the Counterterrorism Blog, Michael Kraft writes that Lebanon shouldn't get a free pass for releasing Mohammad Ali Hamadi. Hamadi was paroled by Germany on Dec 15 after serving 19 years for trying to smuggle explosives into Germany. Hamadi is also wanted by the US for murderering a US Navy diver, as I wrote about here.

Kraft writes:

Providing terrorists with sanctuary from prosecution or extradition is one of the grounds the Secretary of State can use for formally designating a country as one that has repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism. This is one of the illustrative criteria that the Secretary of State can use in making the determination. Another criteria is providing safe houses or headquarters.

These criteria arguably apply to Lebanon.

With Syria under tremendous pressure, and especially having withdrawn troops, we can hope that Lebanon would turn away from terrorism, but with Syria no longer there to take the blame for support of terrorism, Lebanon will have to choose quickly what path it will follow.

Lebanon has enjoyed a pass on the terrorist list designations because the State Department concluded that the Bakka Valley area, where most of the terrorists were and still are based, was under Syrian control. But now that Syria is largely out of Lebanon, that productive rationale has lost its validity.

President Bush once said "You are either with us or against us". Are we still serious about enforcing that?