Clash of Civilizations or Clash of Values? The Rhetoric of War and Peace.

This article was published in a slightly different version at Iran's View that includes a comment on Obama's first speech in an American Mosque in Baltimore on February 3, 2016.

Values and the West's double standards approach to ethical pluralism.

Ethical pluralism is focused on individual preferences in modern pluralistic societies.  It does not dictate what is ethical or what is not.  It only creates a space for rational dialogue on the diversity of values aimed at reaching a consensus within the limits of reason.  Ethical pluralism is practised in the West for controversial moral issues like abortion, gay rights and Euthanasia.  Although laws are legislated in these cases in some Western countries,  in many cases they do not constrain those who oppose them to live by them.  It is believed that ethical pluralsim creates more tolerance and more freedoms for the individual.  The essence of ethical pluralism is that moral codes cannot be forced, they emerge by consensus through a rational discourse and dialogue on values.  

Within western societies, theorizing ethical diversity and pluralism requires a commitment to dialogue within the limits of reason in order to reach a consensus on values.  I am referring here to the Habermasian theory of ethics for modern democratic societies, which Habermas calls ‘Discourse ethics’.  These pillars of ethical pluralism are denied by the West when advancing its own set of values in non Western societies. 

As such, Western moral values, having emerged by consensus, cannot be forced on other cultures and societies who did not participate in the rational discourse leading to a consensus on these values.  In most non Western societies, values are anchored, not in individual preferences, but in community norms, elders’ wisdoms and local laws, which ancient Greeks used to call ‘nomos’.   Moreover, in most non Western societies, core values are transmitted between generations, not discussed in the public sphere, where they tend to play a cohesive social role in which the individual self identifies more with the community than with the ego.

There is a tension in the West’s approach to values which allows the individual a greater space of liberty within Western societies but denies this liberty to individuals in other societies attached to their traditions and the norms of their communities.  In fact, there is a faulty assumption in the West that the individual Self in non-western societies is modeled on the Western Self, despite historical and cultural differences.  This tension has become palpable with the advent of the globalization of markets, cultures and ideas.  The West stands as the promoter of one set of values, its own, over others.   In many cultures, this tension is being tackled differently, either by total assimilation, peaceful but active resistance, distrust and retreat, or violent resentful extremism directed against the West in the case of Sunni Islam. Colonialism was built on the assumption that the colonized were different in humanity while globalization is built on the assumption that 'there is no such thing as society' (as Margaret Thatcher famously said) whereby only individuals detached from their historical and cultural roots exist as consumers having an infinite set of preferences determined by the markets.

Ethical pluralism, although unequally practised by the West, is not part of the relations the West establishes with other societies, where it is assumed that only individuals exist and that they must consume the product of the ethical consensus built by other individuals in the West.   What we have witnessed so far since 911 is the forcing and enforcing of Western values through military campaigns, invasions and occupations preceded and followed by violent backlashes from extremist fundamentalists.  Post 911, international relations have become a domain of confrontations thought to be confrontations of civilizations and values.

Many Muslims today live in communities, societies and countries which emphasize traditional values and the supremacy of the community over the individual.   However, Muslims are not the only ones who live in traditions which are antagonists to Western values, but they are currently the main culture and religion to react and to be targeted by this confrontation of values and it is mainly Sunni Muslims who are engaged in this confrontation.

A broken dialogue on values.

This is the reason why a dialogue on values is urgently needed between the West and Muslims.  Some in the West as well as in Muslim countries do not believe in the dialogue on values, firmly standing on both sides of the values divide, committed to wars.  But others, and they aren’t many, believe in this dialogue. President Obama articulated his desire for dialogue with Muslims in his Cairo’s discourse early during his first mandate.  But due to many factors, including America’s previous war commitments and voices of confrontation inside his own administration, Obama wasn’t able to act on his Cairo’s discourse. We will never know if Obama was sincere about this dialogue.  But what we know is that he did not blindly follow those who wanted a confrontation to the end with Iran. Recently Ayatollah Khamenei wrote on his twitter account that Obama wrote him a second letter in 2009 full of affirmative statements about Iran.  Khamenei said he had the intention to reply to the letter but after Obama supported the protests against the government in Iran in 2009 he refrained from doing so.  Obama acted against the voices of confrontation with Iran, but not before the failure of the 2009 colour revolution for regime change.  He finally succeeded in reaching a deal with Iran that, if its implementation is unhindered by more confrontation, should naturally open a dialogue on values between Muslims and the West.

On the Iranian side, the deal reached between Iran and the West silenced the voices of confrontation and opened possibilities to initiate a dialogue between Muslims and the West.  Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was first to open this dialogue on the values of Islam with his two letters to western youth (January 2015 letter and November 2015 letter).  Khamenei’s initiatives came in a context of a renewed wave of Sunni terrorism by ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria), more barbaric and more sectarian than the terrorism witnessed since 911, and threatening this time the Near East, the Levant and Europe.

While the nuclear deal was being worked out between the West and Iran during the year 2015, many terrorist attacks by Sunni Muslim extremists hit Muslim countries, especially Iraq and Syria, as well as Europe.  Most notable were the attacks in France claimed by ISIS that attracted wide and sustained attention in Western media.  ISIS is virulently anti-Iran and anti-Shia.  It promotes a return to the  Sunni Caliphate.  The first attacks were on January 7th at the offices of Charlie Hebdo and on a Jewish surpermarket in Paris and its suburb and killed seventeen and wounded others.  Khamenei’s first letter was published merely two weeks after these attacks.  It spoke of a different kind of Islam, attempting to educate Western youth on Islam and the real sources of knowledge on Islam, away from the terrible and negative image that was being presented to the West by ISIS.  The letter was deliberately addressed to youth.  Khamenei argued that dialogue with Western leaders was futile because these leaders not only promoted the kind of Muslim extremism embodied by ISIS but also did not appear to be willing to learn about the true religion of Islam and Muslims beyond the terrorists clichés. The second series of attacks in France in 2015 happened on Novembre 13 at the Bataclan concert venue and a café in Paris and killed hundred and thirty people and wounded many.  Ayatollah Khamenei’s second letter to Western youth was published two weeks later on November 29.  In it, Ayatollah Khamenei chides the West for its double standards towards the victims of terrorism and for the imposition of Western culture by force uniformly on Muslim societies.

Although the lives lost to terrorism in France weren’t more precious than other lives taken by blind terrorism elsewhere, the attacks were alarming, not only because they touched the heart of Europe, its cultural symbols and its youth, but because they threatened to create a greater wedge between European and Muslim populations inside and outside Europe, in neighbouring countries around the Meditterranean basin, and beyond in the Asian and African continents where the majority of Muslims live.  While American neocons, who so much wished for the clash of civilizations after 911, could observe the increasing wedge between Muslims and non Muslims far from their own shores separated and shielded from this clash by two oceans, Europe is increasingly becoming the theatre of the clash.   

A clash of values is not a clash of civilizations

What is the nature of the clash between Sunni extremism and the West?  It is important to make a distinction here between the clash of civllizations and the clash of values.  While the clash of civilizations includes also a clash of values, it is about more than values.  It is confrontational in essence because civilizations aim for self preservation and fight against their annihilation.  The term ‘civilization’ means not only values but a geopolitical, economic and military space.  The clash of values can be resolved through dialogue.  Values tend to evolve slowly and by consensus according to each society’s needs.   They can intersect between two civilizations and they can be passed on peacefully between civilizations. Many civilizations’ values evolve from the inside, but also from contacts with other civlizations.  In the ancient times, these contacts were mostly established through wars.  The citizens of ancient Greece considered non Greeks as barbarians and non humans because ancient Greece was a ‘closed’ civilization.  This perception changed during the Hellenistic period after contacts were made by Alexander the great with other civilizations through conquest and wars. 

The term ‘clash of civilizations’ is greatly misleading.  It implies a confrontation.  It is both a testimony to the neocons’ warring agenda as well as to their backward thinking.  Wars aren’t needed today to establish contacts with other civilizations.  Today’s means of communication are many, multi-level, fast and easy.

The fall of the former communist bloc countries should have led us to a more cooperative, less confrontational world, militarily speaking.  Instead, the neocons created the clash of civilizations to produce more wars and more confrontations to advance American hegemony in a unipolar world.  With 911 and its aftermath, Sunni Muslim terrorism, initially born out from the collaboration of America’s cold war ideology & Sunni Wahhabism against the former communist bloc, set the scene worldwide for a spectacular and threatening clash of values, mistaken for a clash of civilizations.  Wherever there was a clash of values, the neocons created wars resembling a clash of civilizations with their lot of humiliations, provocations and blasphemy of religious symbols,  leading to a greater clash of values, reinforcing in a loop the ‘clash of civilizations’.   

It is Europe and Asia where most people on the planet, and most Muslims live, that are set to take the full impact of this clash being prepared for decades now by the neocons. The neocons’ game in Europe is to treat Europe’s woes resulting from a clash of  values between east and west, between  north and south, with more confrontations and wars. 

This is the post 911 reality created by the neocons. A world that has every possible tool to make communication and dialogue on many issues, including values, easy and natural, yet is locked in confrontations and wars. As often, it takes two to dance.  The neocons’ project to produce a clash of civilizations is greatly helped by resentful extremism and its state sponsors.

To be aware of this post 911 reality is to make everything possible to prevent a great war in Europe and its geopolitical surroundings.   And fortunately for us, the majority of Muslims do not want this clash of civilizations which has been hurting Muslim countries and Muslims more than others.  Fortunately for us too, Iran refuses to engage in the clash of civilizations.  Amid the tensions of the post 911 world, Iran has shown the world it can make peace without losing its dignity.  I have argued elsewhere that both the nuclear deal and Khamenei’s letter to western youth form a coherent approach by Iran to treat the woes of Islam and show the West that there is an alternative to confrontation with Islam and Muslims, that there is an alternative to terrorism.

Those in the West who want a dialogue on values with Muslims to peacefully resolve differences instead of a clash of civilizations and wars can now count on Iran’s leadership.   A dialogue on values can be much more enriching than the forcing of western values on Muslim societies.  A dialogue on values doesn’t and shouldn’t end by one set of values taking on another but by finding common ground amid differences.  That’s the essence of communication and diplomacy and the respect for the dingity of others and our common humanity. 

Russia, which has worked hard to end Iran’s isolation, has a diplomacy that instinctively understands the potential of resolving the issue of the clash of civilizations that feeds today’s devastating terrorism eating at the heart of all these civilizations.  Because Russia's neighbour, Europe, is by excellence the theatre for this clash.  And because a clash of civilizations that counts on terrorism to provoke a confrontation of values  will undoubtedly lead to the end of civilizations. 

The US however, despite the nuclear deal and the recent détente with Iran, is still very much sitting on the fence, between war and peace.  Hesitations and mixed messages, as well as Obama’s end of mandate, risk annihilitating the dialogue that the Iran deal is promising, putting the initiative back in the hands of the neocons.

As I wrote in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo tragedy, a dialogue on values is urgently needed to silence the voices of confrontation.  The clash of civilizations is an idea as backward as the barbaric terrorism it sets out to explain... and fight... by curtailing our civil liberties and creating an artificial wedge between civilizations otherwise destined to increase their common ground in an era of rapid communications where societies are becoming more open and more welcoming.  

The promoters of the clash of civilizations are the new enemies of the Open Society.

Russia's role in Syria: a chance for peace

The Syrian conflict is reaching a breaking point, it has been going on for far too long now and it could go on like this for another five years leading to  the spread of ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) both territorially and ideologically and more refugees knocking on Europe’s door.  Regardless of who is responsible for the ISIS phenomenon, political and security void is always fertile ground for groups like ISIS.

Some tried to use the refugee exodus we are witnessing from conflict zones, including Syria, to Europe to push for a military intervention against Assad and break the five-year military stalemate.  But, after Libya, we know, and cannot afford to ignore, that a military victory against Assad will give us the same results as the current stalemate, not to mention the fact that it is not assured at all, as in Libya. A military victory against Assad will embolden ISIS and sends more refugees to the shores of Europe. The region cannot afford one more failing state.

If neither a military action against Assad nor a stalemate will stem the flow of refugee and eradicate ISIS, which are the immediate concerns of rational actors in this crisis,  then adequate action in the Syrian dossier is needed.  And certainely not the kind of action that has been going on, supporting different groups to militarily challenge the government, and certainely not the kind of action some are calling for like a No Fly Zone leading to open military intervention.

With the refugee exodus, Europe has been caught up with the reality of the Syrian crisis.  It is softening its stance on Assad’s departure. The US state department has followed suit.  Kerry's latest declarations with their technical and convoluted terminology to talk about Assad's departure or Russia's presence in Syria are indications of a willingness to compromise.
In fact, the US risks losing its european allies in the halls of power if it doesn’t change its stance on Syria to ease its allies’ concerns.

The time for a political solution is ripe and Russia is well positioned to carve out this solution ; it is cordial with every country in the region and has leverage on every country in the region.  Moreover, Russia, with China in mind too, is the country who stands to lose most if the Syrian confict continues threatening it with terrorism spreading to its territory and its communities.

Russia has two incentives for actively working out a solution to the Syrian crisis, stopping terrorism from spreading and transforming its leverage in the ME into political capital on the regional and international scene.  

But for Russia to convince all actors of the seriousness of its intentions, and to give itself the means of the leverage it intends to exert, it needs to beef up its military presence in Syria.  This is how we should interpret the recent moves by Russia in Syria.  In this, Russia’s task was made easy by its long standing military cooperation and military presence in Syria. 

This is not what some have called propping up Assad or inserting itself in the region. Russia has always been in Syria, it doesn't need to 'insert' itself there.  Russia's interests are in eradicating ISIS because ISIS wants to expand its brand in the Caucasus, and beyond.  Currently, ISIS is becoming a territorial threat to the Eurasian and African continents, America being protected by two oceans (ISIS marines is not for tomorrow.) 

Russia's other interest is in officializing its role as an unavoidable regional player.  Indeed, Russia doesn't seek to become an unavoidable regional player, it already is. Contrary to the US, it has maintained good relations with every country in the region and intends to capitalize on this as well as on its positive role in carving out a deal between Iran and the P5+1.  Iran is the other regional player that has interest to see the end of the Syria crisis.  But while Iran is certainely an important regional player with Saudi Arabia, none of them has Russia's leverage in the region and can be seen as a neutral party.  Russia certainely has Iran's blessings in its moves in Syria and intends to build on them.  

Russia may be seen in some circles in the US and the West as having a partisan stance in this crisis, however, it is currently the party that's most neutral and that has diplomatic channels with every player in the crisis.

Let's see Russia's new assertiveness in Syria and the region for what it is: a chance for eradicating terrorism and a chance for peace.  Russia has proved in August 2013, with the chemical weapons agreement between Syria and the UN, that it is capable of putting the breaks to another catastrophic military intervention in the Middle East, and it is going to do it again.

Us and Putin

Yesterday, I watched the 2012 documentary 'I, Putin',  by Hubert Seipel (French version, Youtube.)



Seipel was one of the few westerners to approach Putin so closely, accompanying him on hunting trips, to his Hockey games, and swimming and Judo practices.  His documentary is one of the few to present a complex portrait of Putin and was hailed as objective while being intimate, leaving the international audience to make its mind and gain a better knowledge of Putin through the documentary.  Despite this, Spiegel gave a largely western centric and negative account of Putin, as he appears in the documentary, brushing aside the insight offered by Seipel.

The documentary is not intimate in the sense that it offers knowledge of Putin's private life, which was kept off-limits.  It is intimate in another way, in reducing the distance between the largely a priori western perception of Putin - as a leader whose only aim is soviet revival - and the national perception of Putin, by presenting Putin against a backdrop of recent Soviet and Russian history and Putin's family history.

The most important thing we learn from this documentary, in my opinion, is that Putin was not part of the Soviet nomenklatura.  He comes from a working class background and had an ambition for himself to work for the KGB.

Putin left the KGB after their failed coup against Gorbatchev's Perestroika, proved his skills in the St. Petersburg's municipal council, as advisor to the mayor, fighting the crime that engulfed Russia after the fall of the USSR, then became Yeltsin's trusted man, probably because of the same skills he showed in St. Petersburg. He restructured & headed the new KGB, the FSB, and climbed quickly the different echelons of power during the Yeltsin's years.  Putin's rise to the pinnacle of power during these troubled years appears as natural, he had the right instincts to rescue his country from disintegration navigating between a disoriented class of apparatchiks, and young oligarchs seizing the country's resources and industry, unemcumbered by the non existant law and order.  This was a time when the USSR had disappeared leaving Russians without institutions, without a country, and in economic apocalypse.  Putin filled the void and guided the existent institutions on the road to reformation, while nationalizing the country's resources and bargaining them on the world market in order to sustain an economic activity capable of lifting the country and its population from the economic abyss towards which it was pushed by the oligarchs who were aided by West.

One can fairly say that the new Russia is not the Russia of the Tzars, not the Russia of the communist party, not the Russia of the oligarchs, it is the Russia of Putin.  We can easily understand the responsibility that Putin must feel and shoulder for Russia.  It is within this context that we have to understand Russia's nascent democracy.  Putin could have easily become a full-fledged autocrat, unemcumbered by the democratic process.  But here we see another aspect of Putin: a man self-aware of the perception of his leadership in the rest of the world - and correlatively - of the place of Russia in the world.  The Putin we see in the documentary is a leader who wants to work with the rest of the world, and the West, as he proved it many times already by developing Russia's diplomacy and econnomic reach worldwide.

But what has the West offered Putin?  At best, an inability to understand the new Russia, at worst, disdain, arrogance and threats to comply with the diktat of a league bent on keeping Russia 'contained' or rather weak - to speak plainly.  Indeed, neither Russia, nor the USSR, even at the height of Soviet might and power, ever achieved the military reach of the West.

I wondered, at the end of the documentary, which emphasized Putin's outsider status among his country's elite, if western leaders, none of whom come from a working class background similar to Putin's, and none of whom ever felt the weight of having to shoulder, on their own, the responsibility of keeping a country over their heads, as in keeping a roof over one's head and bread on the table, will ever be able to understand the man and his mission.

For certain, Putin can be ruthless, but which leader isn't when his country is on the brink?   The western press would like us to believe that Putin is only this.  He isn't. 

Of interest in the documentary:
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Minute 21 : 19 Putin on NATO's anti-missile defence shield

Minute 24 : 26 Putin on Chechnya

Minute 35 : Putin on the disintegration of the USSR

Minute 40:  Footage of Yeltsin, the West's darling, during a government session

Minute 46 :23 Putin and the oligarchs

Obvious biases: Western media special standards for the Israeli Palestinian conflict

Replace in this story the Chechens by Palestinians and the Russian army by the IDF.

It is impossible to read such a story line in the western media and such justification from Human rights groups when it comes to the Israeli Palestinian conflict.

Russia trying to regain its former cold war role in the Arab world

Russia yesterday moved to expand its growing military influence in the Middle East when it announced it is giving Lebanon 10 fighter jets, in the most significant upgrade of Lebanon's military since the civil war ended almost two decades ago.

Russia's defence ministry said it was giving the secondhand MiG-29s to Beirut free of charge. The gift was part of a defence cooperation deal that would see Moscow train Lebanese military personnel.

Russia is also reportedly preparing to sell SA-20 anti-aircraft missiles to Iran.

Or they are maybe just doing business like everybody else. I don't think Russia will regain its former cold war role in the Arab world (an expression I really hate to use because, politically, there is no such a thing as an 'Arab world'). At the height of its power, the USSR was able to engage its military only defensively in Eastern Europe and Cuba. Their cold war role in the ME was minimal. It did not prevent Israel from expanding. Thanks also the the political divisions in the Arab world.
One of the main reasons also for the short lived rule of communism in the USSR is that it was unable, and its leaders unwilling, to propagate and exert its military influence in far and away countries like Capitalism and the US did successfully. In fact, the cold war role on the international level of the USSR was pretty much exagerated by the US in order to instill fear, they have been doing the same with Bin Laden.
Another reason to this rapprochement between Russia and the Arab world could be that Russia, after an initial period of hostility with the Muslim population in the former soviet republics, is trying to ease things with them and secure its borders at home. I see the move not as a defiance directed at the US and Israel but as a sign of consolidation of relations on its frontiers with Muslim republics, a security concern prompted by the Georgian crisis.

P.S. Contrary to what the article linked to here may suggest, Iran is not part of the Arab world.

Georgia Claims on Russia War Called Into Question

From The New York Times. Another Time, another president, another NYT rethoric. Now that the new coming adminsitration is willing to talk before it strikes, the news will follow. Note that the NYT coverage of the war in Goergia has changed in a matter of less than two months.

“Mr. President. We always fight for our friends.”

Condi Rice to Mikhail Saakashvili during her last visit to Georgia.

Incredible, caught this video at Informed Comment. Fox News interviews a 12 year old girl and her aunt from south Ossetia who were there during the hostilities. The girl and the aunt blamed the Georgian government, and Georgia's president Mikhail Saakashvili who is McCain's, the Neo-cons, and Rice's darling, for civil casualties in Ossetia and for starting the war. The reporter on Fox could not take it. Watch the video...


Another Neo-con puppet bites the dust.
UPDATE: Thanks to Erdla, I was able to watch this video which shows Saakashvili not only biting the dust but also eating his tie. In this video there is at least some honest reporting on the conflict and it comes from the BBC.

The War in Ossetia

I have not been contributing with meaningful posts on this blog as of late. But the war in Ossetia clearly needs our attention and this very informative post from The Two Wolves actually cheered me up.

Read here on Israel's role in this war as a top arms and training provider to Georgian troops.

From Jews Sans Frontières: Pulling an Israel in the Caucasus.

Putin Outmaneuvers The West

Mikhail Gorbachev: Russia had no choice

UPDATE, WOW...'Georgia War A Neocon Election Ploy?' (And the answer to the question...)

UPDATE, August 28th 08: Putin accuses Bush of provoking Goergia crisis to help elect McCain

Political Assassinations in Lebanon: Truth And Consequences

The UN Inquiry on the assassination of former Lebanese PM Rafiq Hariri and other political assassinations in Lebanon is stumbling on the unwillingness of ten countries to collaborate. Collaboration with the inquiry was a number one requirement in all UN resolutions concerning the inquiry. The head commissioner, Serge Brammertz, did not publish the names of the countries who won't collaborate, but speculations are running high since the Russian ambassador, Vitaly Tchourkine, asked for the divulgation of the names.

Rafiq Hariri was killed on a Valentine day, February 14th, in Beyrouth, after 'supposedly' a car exploded near his convoy. There is no final official report about the assassination since Brammertz's predecessor, Detlev Mehlis, was discharged after his line of inquiry collapsed in a serie of false and fabricated testimonies which were the only 'proofs' he had produced accusing Syria of the assassination. Syria's army left Lebanon after a public and international outrage at the assassination designated the Syrians as prime suspects. The follow-up to this event was an election victory of the March 14th movement led by Hariri son and Walid Jumblatt as well as other pro-US political movements in Lebanon. However, the March 14th movement is, since then, unable to overcome the dwindling of its political support inside Lebanon resulting from its inability to build consensus and from the fact that most Lebanese see the movement as accomplice of the latest July Israeli agression which was overtly supported by March 14th's western political mentors, the US and the UK.

While not mentioning the names of the countries not collaborating with the inquiry, Brammertz declared being totally satisfied with the Syrian collaboration. On his blog, Alain Gresh, a 'Le Monde Diplomatique' correspondant and specialist of the Middle East, reveals the names of some of these uncooperative countries as published on January 12th by the Lebanese daily Al-Akhbar, a daily seen as close to the Lebanese opposition. They are:
The US who have satellite pictures of the assassination;
Israel who has pictures taken before and after the assassination by its spy planes continously flying over Lebanon;
France who detains a suspect, Mohammed Said Saddik, who made a false testimony to the first UN inquiry headed by Mehlis;
Among other countries mentioned by the Lebanese daily are Germany, Saudi Arabia, Koweit, Australia, UAE, and Brazil.

It is known to these countries that:
The site of the assassination had undergone a 'cleanup' before any evidence gathering;
The first UN inquiry was marred by the lack of professionalism and lack of neutrality on Mehlis's part;
Precious time was lost for collecting and analysing the evidence;
Other politicians and prominent figures died since Hariri was killed, they all are related to the March 14th movement, and their assassinations prompted, eache time, accusations against Syria;
These political assassinations were included by the UN in the mandate of the commission at the demand of the Lebanese state;

Given that Brammertz was making progress and briefing the UN along the way to the point some assume that the change of method in the latest assassination in Lebanon (that of Pierre Gemayyel) was propably prompted by informations on Brammertz's progress and a will to derail the inquiry, one may wonder why these countries, who are all supporting the corrupt pro-US Lebanese government of Fouad Sanyura, won't help a honest inquiry into a series of assassinations that destabilised Lebanon and brought it to the edge of a new civil war ?

Ironically, the March 14th movement and its accolytes had the word 'Truth' as a main slogan on their protest banners (Haqiqa, in Arabic).