Last week, Lebanese legislator Antoine Ghanem was assassinated by a powerful bomb, the signature weapon of Syria’s secret service. He was at least the fifth member of the Lebanese legislature to die in this manner. Of course, there is no proof of the bombers’ identity, but all five victims have been distinguished by their anti-Syrian positions. If the perpetrator was not the Syrian regime, it was its fairy godmother.
This adds up to a blatant act of international aggression, the very thing that the United Nations was founded to prevent. And it is unfolding in full view. Where is the U.N. Security Council? Where is the Secretary General? Where are all those who preach greater reliance on the world body as the guarantor of “peace and security?” Where is the chorus that sings of international law, at least when it comes to rebuking the United States? (Where, for that matter, is Washington?)
Aggression has long been recognized as the most fundamental crime under international law, but for generations nations failed to agree on a definition. Then, the U.N. Charter gave it clear definition, making this the essential principle of world order. Article 2.4 outlaws “the use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.”
Could there be a clearer case of the use of force against the political independence of a state than what Syria is doing to Lebanon? By murdering anti-Syrian legislators, Damascus hopes to tilt the delicate balance of power in Lebanon in its own favor when it comes to selecting a new Lebanese president to replace the incumbent, Emile Lahoud. Lahoud plays Charlie McCarthy to Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad’s Edgar Bergen. It was for his objections to giving Lahoud an illegal additional term of office that former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Harari was blown to smithereens. This was the most dramatic crime of al-Assad’s murder spree (which the U.N. may or may not get around to prosecuting).
But the crime at hand is more serious than serial killing. It is the attempt to rob a nation of its political independence. Will anyone take notice? Will anyone take action?
