Macron’s colonial mission in Lebanon and Iraq

Empowering Weak & Oppressed

Crescent International

Muharram 14, 1442 2020-09-02

Daily News Analysis

by Crescent International

French President Emmanuel Macron’s arrogant meddling in Lebanon’s internal affairs, when compared with his dismal track record in France, is little more than political circus.

Following his two-day imperial-style visit to Lebanon, he also landed in Baghdad on September 2, again to advance the West’s colonial agenda.

Since Macron became president of France, French cities have witnessed bloody street battles.

People resent his regime’s pandering to the wealthy while ignoring the poor and needy.

In February 2020, a study by the French Observatory of Economic Conditions (OFCE) described Macron as the president of the rich.

Since December 2018, for over a year, tens of thousands of French citizens fought the brutes in uniforms (aka the police) in what became famous as the Yellow Vest movement demanding an end to elitist socio-economic policies.

In May 2020, Macron lost his parliamentary majority, after a group of MPs broke away to form a new party accusing him of failing to deliver on many of his electoral promises.

The same month, French doctors confronted Macron during his visit to a hospital.

They accused him of undermining the health care system that led to France performing so poorly during the COVID-19 pandemic.

As reported by the Spectator “unemployment – a lagging indicator – will be at 11 per cent in 2021… France’s economy will be one of the worst affected in the world, with GDP contracting between 11.4 and 14.1 per cent.”

Yet, Macron has the audacity to land in Beirut threatening sanctions if the Lebanese do not agree on reforms acceptable to France.

Macron’s talk of ending sectarianism also reeks of hypocrisy.

It was the French that instituted the confessional-based political system in Lebanon that is the root of most of its problems to this day.

Thus, the question arises: who is Macron trying to fool?

Most probably the poorly informed Eurocentric and racist French electorate.

Macron certainly failed to convince many in Lebanon and those in the region.

No informed person would buy the PR campaign that imperialist France, with a gory history of massacres and colonization, will fix Lebanon’s problems.

Macron is in Lebanon for one reason only, to create additional socio-political hurdles for Hizbullah.

Has Macron tried to fix Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s puppet regime in Egypt? If not, why not?

The only Arab-Muslim force that booted Zionist Israel out of its territory is in Lebanon: Hizbullah.

No such force exists in Algeria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia or Egypt. All these countries have notoriously corrupt and despotic regime.

Hizbullah is not just a political entity with whom NATO regimes have a political disagreement, it’s a movement whose success and resilience challenges the Western political, economic and social paradigm.

History shows that colonialist regimes like the one headed by Macron are not able of tolerating such differences.

As the prominent Palestinian journalist and media consultant Laith Marouf pointed out, “many in Lebanon aim to end corruption; many of those also blame Hizbullah, not for the corruption that everyone admits it has nothing to do with; but for coexisting with it and not uprooting it. In my opinion, those who make such claims are either naive/impatient, or disingenuous tools, fools or agents of Imperialism…it [Hizbullah] decided as a liberation movement who expelled the occupiers, not to take control of the government; an exception in the annals of history. It decided not to purge the collaborators and agents; it calculated that would require a blood bath and would lead to a civil war and a distraction from the enemy in the south.”

This is precisely the strategy which Macron and other NATO regimes want to disrupt.

They want Hizbullah’s energies to be consumed by internal matters so that Zionist Israel could continue to act lawlessly in the region, without hindrance.

Lebanon is paying the price partly for being the only semi-success story in the Muslim world which not only expelled Zionist Israel on its own terms, but also because it has a vibrant free press and an electoral system based on some form of societal debate, even though it needs major improvements.

However, none of these exists among any of the pro-Western despotic regimes in the Muslim world.

So, Macron would be better advised to head to Saudi Arabia or Jordan and talk about reforms to his subordinates in Amman and Riyadh.

Instead, he headed to Iraq where he arrogantly claimed that he was there to protect Iraqi sovereignty.

Macron has a strange concept of “sovereignty”.

He is scheduled to hold talks with Nechirvan Barzani, president of the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region, whose purpose is clearly aimed at undermining Iraqi sovereignty.

The French president also did not demand that all US forces pull out of Iraq immediately as demanded by the Iraqi parliament last January.

This was also the demand of the Iraqi prime minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi, when he met US President Donald Trump in the White House on August 20 (see here).

The White House press briefing after the meeting made only elliptical reference to US troops withdrawal but it was nonetheless on the agenda.

Colonialism, it seems is alive and still threatening to march across Muslim lands.

What choice do Muslims have but to stand up and resist to defend their honour, integrity and sovereignty?