Another Dispatch From Lebanon

Read how desperate people are becoming there. Christopher is better off than most because he has the ability to leave anytime he wants to, but he chooses to stay.

Despite the relative quiet in Beirut on Tuesday, the jittery sense of desperation is getting worse. The Westerners are being evacuated, but that’s not necessarily good news for the Lebanese staying put. Once the Westerners are gone, people on the streets wonder what will hold the Israelis back. The lull in bombing, in fact, is widely seen as a deliberate break by the Israelis to allow the foreign nationals to get out.

And yet for all the press that the Western evacuation is getting, there’s another group of refugees that isn’t being noticed. Lebanon has a large population of Iraqis, Sudanese and Somalis, as well as guest workers from the Philippines and Sri Lanka, who are too poor to pay their way out. And their governments are either ineffective (Iraq, Sudan) inattentive (the Philippines, Sri Lanka) or non-existent (Somalia) to offer any resources for these people.

People are suffering and the one person who has a chance, no matter how slight, of bringing an end to this suffering is AWOL as usual. Can you say the moron? Yeah, I thought you could.

Should I not post Christopher's latest article (fat chance) be sure to check out his site. We have to know what's happening "on the ground" as they say.

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