That's what Omar's father calls the bombing that killed Hariri.
"This is September 11 of the ME" in reference to the situation in Lebanon.
But it seems that there are other people and bloggers who share my father's point of view; Chrenkoff shares this thought and has an informative update on the investigations.
Meanwhile, public opinion polls in Arab countries show that the majority supports the idea of an international investigation on the attack (69.59% on the BBC Arabic and 58.8% on Alarabiya) but it's also interesting to see that around 99% of the samples in Ramalla/Palestine oppose the international investigation!
I wonder why? [/irony]
How about...because they're siding with another Ba'athist dictator (something that got them ethnically cleaned from Kuwait after Desert Storm)?
They're also probably afraid, with good reason, that the perpetrators will be traced back to Palestinians at some point. This would give the Arab world more distate for Palestinians than they already have, thus making their situation more tenuous in many Arab countries.
Ooops, I forgot a closing tag (smile). Added above.
Given that they're basically relegated to subhuman status in Lebanon (with the active support of the Syrian government, no less!) as it is, I'm not entirely certain how any Palestinian involvement in the Hariri bombing would truly change anything for the people on the ground.
Palestinian support for all these Arab tinpot despot types would make a lot more sense if they actually tried to support the Palestinian people, sans the terrorist groups and their fellow travelers. At some point, you really got to question these folks' taste in friends ...
A closer parallel is the assassination of Benigno Aquino. I blogged about it a bit, and the parallels are striking.
I am afraid the closest parallel is Spain, where the conservative party lost the elections three days after 3/11. It is becoming a habit to blow up pro-american or pro-western politicians or governments and then blame Al-Qaida, Islamic extremist and the like, when sometimes are internal issues.
I agree with Joe A. This murder is clearly intended to break the neck of the anti-Syrian opposition before the Lebanese election. The Syrian regime –the hardliners around Vice-president Abdul-Halim Khaddam, if you want to nuance- have been hysterical since the election in Iraq. So, they had to kill Hariri, the man who could unite the traditionally fractious Lebanese against them. For one thing is clear: an the one side, Lebanon is the economic milk cow of the Syrian decadent elite; on the other, if they get kicked out of there by a democratic election, the next will be the non-Allawi majority in Syria rising against the ruling Allawui sect (ca. 12% of the population).
By the way, the system used for the attack seems to have been an underground charge. There was a precedent of that system in Madrid 30 years ago, when Basque separatists killed the would be successor of General Franco.
Chrenkoff explains the Palestinian position rather well, I think. And I'm afraid that I agree with Omar when he says:
Not sure if this is Omar's take, too - but here's mine:
There will be a 9/11 of the Middle East, and unfortunately it will look a lot more like the American experience than the assassination of Hariri. Too many Islamists, too many soft targets, too much motive as the regional tide begins to turn and the Islamists begin to feel betrayed.
I do not believe they will see their idol dying in what they wrongly assume to be its birthplace, and go quietly.
Hariri's assassination may be a wake-up call of sorts, to some - I tend to lean toward John Bono's Aquino analogy, if we must use one at all. But there are many cards still unplayed in this drama, in a region with different rules. When all is said and done, I think we'll find that this event and its aftermath will be somewhat unique.
If Hariri's assassination has ripples that change the Middle East for the better, that change will represent a significant human achievement that neither requires nor deserves comparison to any other event. It will stand on its own, and those who participated will be able to claim it fully. Not as a replica of anything, though others may have helped to inspire it; but as something of their own hands and born of their unique circumstances.
Inshallah.
What I find interesting is the idea of an Iraqi identifying an attack in Lebanon with 9/11.
We're a long way from where I hope we will eventually come out in the Middle East, but that is an analogy which never would have been made 2 years ago or even 1 year ago.
Good point about Syria, Juan (#6). I agree. That is the problem: the withdrawal from Lebanon may have an important impact on the pockets and powers of the Syrian governing class.
With respect to the murder of Admiral Carrero-Blanco, General Franco successor (which was an even darker episode than 3/11) the worst of all, as you correctly say, is that set a precedent in Spain for political change through dynamite. Sadly, that is not the only one: Mr. Aznar himself, the chief of the conservative party, suffered an assassination attempt by ETA months before he won the national elections in 1996. The fact that the bomb went off a quarter of a second earlier, piercing the engine compartment of his vehicle, and the heavy armour, saved the day (Clearly, the car bomb in Lebanon was loaded with a huge amount of explosives to prevent this).
The strange thing about Mr. Aznar assassination attempt is that the car bomb had to be activated using a 100 meter long cable, because his vehicle had jammers to interfere radio controlled devices. The car bomb and the cable spent days on that street (Mr. Aznar vehicle followed different routes each day), I just cannot believe that nobody spotted them. Since Aznar and the driver survived unharmed and the Oklahoma bombing took place that same morning, the issue was downplayed nationally and internationally.