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“The former Lebanese leader’s own brother had been assassinated in Beirut by these same jihadists.”

I remember when this happened decades ago; there is a warning for the West in how Lebanon’s story played out. With a 50/50 Muslim/Christian split, it was set up to have one as the president and the other as the prime minister, but birthrate eventually shrunk the Christian portion of the population until Muslims thought they could have the whole government.

They were right; France evacuated many of the Christians when it was over.

I believe that the original split, at the time France relinquished its mandate, to the freely elected Lebanese Government, shortly after World War II, was closer to 60/40 Christian. That small Lebanese Christian population, far less than a million, elected two leaders--whose names I cannot recall at the moment (one, I think was Chamoun)--who were widely recognized as significant statesmen, internationally, in the 1950s.

What has happened to Lebanon in the religious wars is truly a tragedy of major historic proportions. The best teacher I ever had, had cut his teeth, as it were, teaching at the American University in Beirut before the War, so I grew up very well aware of the situation in Lebanon.